Law Notes Public International Law Notes
Public International Law notes fully updated for recent exams at Oxford and Cambridge. These notes cover all the major LLB aspects and so are perfect for anyone doing an LLB in the UK or a great supplement for those doing LLBs abroad, whether that be in Ireland, Canada, Hong Kong or Malaysia (University of London). See if you like them by referring to the samples below. We've also included our previous years' authors free of charge, to give you some extra materials to refer to for the tricky topi...
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Basic Concepts
International Personality
Capacity to be the bearer of rights & duties under IL + capacity to maintain rights’(substantive + procedural)
Distinguish
Objective legal personality – erga omnes (arises against the world)
Particular legal personality – binding against consenting states only
Public International Organisations have legal personality at IL
Reparation for Injuries Case (1949) – Swedish national & Chief UN Truce negotiator Bernadotte killed by private gang of terrorists in Jerusalem (then in possession of Israel). ICJ held that, in the event of its agent being killed in performance of duties, it could seek reparation for damage caused to UN & to the agent/persons entitled through him b/c UN is intended to exercise & enjoy functions & rights which can only be explained on the basis of possession of large measure of int. personality & capacity to operate on int. plane. UN’s ability to claim on behalf of B/his family isn’t expressed in Charter but can be implied by way of necessary implication of essentiality to performance of its duties + injury may be such that state wouldn’t be able to claim dipl. protection or agent could be stateless. Actions of UN aren’t based on agent’s nationality but on his status as an agent - doesn’t contradict nationality claims.
Individuals – [partial] legal personality at IL
Lauterpacht – in practice, states are no longer subjects of int. rights & duties
ICJ Statute – only states can be parties to int. proceedings but a number of other instruments have recognised capacity of others
There’s nothing in IL to prevent individuals from directly acquiring rights under treaty provided this is intended by contracting parties
Non HR context – foreign investment claims under ICSID & BIT
Customary IL obligations bind individuals directly regardless of law of their state & any contrary orders received from their superiors – crimes of IL are committed by men, not abstract entities, and that only by punishing individuals IL can be enforced.
Insurgents, national liberation movements may also have personality at IL
Sovereignty
Totality of int. rights & duties recognised by IL as residing in independent territorial unit
Not in itself a right/criterion of statehood
Associated w/‘sovereign equality’ – a normative term/possibly unobjectionable
Can’t say b/c state is sovereign, its conduct isn’t questionable, though!
Notion of Statehood
Evans–misleading to speak of ‘creation of states’ not created the same way as cabinet maker creates a piece of furniture but emerge through spontaneous or organised political action on the part of comm. as a whole who articulate their common destiny in terms of political independence. To extent that there’s reliance on ‘effectiveness’ for purposes of determining existence of state, the role of the law is ex post facto.
Crawford – purely empirical notion of statehood a state isn’t a fact in the sense in which a chair is but it has legal status attaching to certain state of affairs by virtue of certain rules & practices exclusive & gen. characteristics:
plenary competence to perform acts, make treaties, in int. spheres
exclusive competence re internal affairs (naturally, may be constrained by IL)
not subject to compulsory int. process, jurisdiction, settlement w/out consent
‘equality’ in IL
Core of statehood but will always be subject to context.
Statehood = a form of standing, rather than a set of rights (states exist at int. level but this is a concept, not a place = denotes a range of rights/resp. at that level)
Not having treaty making powers is conclusive against being a state.
Quest. whether there’s objective criteria of statehood or open texture of rules enabling states to refuse the status to entities which in fact qualify to be treated as states?
Evans’s critique: C’s analysis may work in context of states which emerge through consensual process but where they emerge out of conflict/dispute, the question is how to conceive a moment in which sovereign authority is created out of mere fact of forcible seizure of power.
Higgins: while the concept has an undeniable core, application of component elements will depend upon:
purpose for which entity is claiming statehood
circumstances in which the claim is made
Criteria
Pan American Union–Art 1 Montevideo Convention on Rights & Duties of States
Permanent population
Defined territory
Government
Capacity to enter into relations w/other states ( Evans – conclusion, rather than a starting point)
Reflects customary IL
Evans – as a starting point, either too abstract (says little, does nothing to guide aspiring states; e.g. Palestine, Quebec) or too strict. No mention of independence, legitimacy, democracy, self determination.
Do we need either:
quantitative measure of intensity (qualities possessed to certain degree) – requires a threshold but unlikely to be possible to articulate in advance
qualitative evaluation (claims made justified in certain way – e.g. pr. of self determination) – relies upon prior establishment of int. recognised regimes of entitlement & resp.
NO: both demand too much ques. is how do we move from fact to law or from cognition of existence of state to its legal recognition w/out assuming the thing being offered the imprimatur of legality s not somehow already in existence....
Permanent Population
No minimum threshold
e.g. Vatican, Monaco
Not a rule of population’s nationality– nationality depends on statehood, not vice versa
result of creation of new state on territory statelessness or automatic change of nationality? = unclear, no gen. obl. on state to grant nationality to all residents on territory
Not a condition of statehood - cast in metaphorical terms must exist as if in relationship to an order of govt. over territory in which their presence as objects of coercion is necessary (Evans)
Defined Territory
No minimum threshold
Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Public International Law Notes.
Public International Law notes fully updated for recent exams at Oxford and Cambridge. These notes cover all the major LLB aspects and so are perfect for anyone doing an LLB in the UK or a great supplement for those doing LLBs abroad, whether that be in Ireland, Canada, Hong Kong or Malaysia (University of London). See if you like them by referring to the samples below. We've also included our previous years' authors free of charge, to give you some extra materials to refer to for the tricky topi...
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