IV - State Responsibility and Liability

Summary

OVERVIEW

The principal development on the rules of state responsibility during 1999–2001 was the adoption by the International Law Commission (ILC) of a series of articles seeking to codify the law in this area. The United States was actively involved in the development of those rules, principally through submission of comments to the ILC on its work. At the same time, the United States was engaged during this period in several incidents implicating its responsibility and liability to foreign nationals, as well as that of other states to U.S. nationals. Typically characterizing its compensation as ex gratia in nature, the United States paid compensation for injuries incurred incidental to U.S. military activities, such as compensation to China for the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and to the families of the victims of an Italian ski gondola knocked down by a U.S. military aircraft. Compensation for injuries sustained during the Second World War also featured during this period, such as compensation by the United States to persons of Japanese ancestry who were not U.S. nationals and were interned in U.S. camps during the Second World War. Conversely, the United States assisted U.S. nationals in obtaining compensation from the government of Germany for persecution during the Second World War by the Nazi regime. U.S. government efforts to assist U.S. nationals, however, remained tempered by its unwillingness to espouse claims in certain situations (such as on grounds that the claimant was not a U.S. national at the time the claim arose), although even then the U.S. government sometimes found ways to promote compensation and restitution of property by foreign governments.