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Full-Text Articles in Law
Abusing The Authority Of The State: Denying Foreign Official Immunity For Egregious Human Rights Abuses, Beth Stephens
Abusing The Authority Of The State: Denying Foreign Official Immunity For Egregious Human Rights Abuses, Beth Stephens
Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law
Government officials accused of human rights abuses often claim that they are protected by state immunity because only the state can be held responsible for acts committed by its officials. This claim to immunity is founded on two interrelated errors. First, the post-World War II human rights transformation of international law has rendered obsolete the view that a state can protect its own officials from accountability for human rights violations. Second, officials can be held individually responsible for their own actions even when international law also holds the states liable for those acts. This Article begins with an analysis of …
Italian Judges' Point Of View On Foreign States' Immunity, Elena Sciso
Italian Judges' Point Of View On Foreign States' Immunity, Elena Sciso
Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law
The Article gives an account of the most recent Italian practice as regarding foreign states' immunity from the jurisdiction of the forum state. In the absence of domestic laws regulating the matter, Italian courts thus far have been directly applying international customary law, making recourse to a progressive interpretation of international rules. In the past, Italian judicial practice together with the Belgian one gave a great contribution to the consolidation of the restrictive immunity theory. In the last few years, Italian courts have lifted immunity with respect to acts of a foreign state qualified as "acta iure imperii" in civil …
State Immunity And Human Rights: Heads And Walls, Hearts And Minds, Roger O'Keefe
State Immunity And Human Rights: Heads And Walls, Hearts And Minds, Roger O'Keefe
Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law
This Article suggests that arguments against the availability of state immunity as a bar to civil actions alleging internationally wrongful ill-treatment abroad are not only destined to fall by and large on deaf ears but are also misdirected as a matter both of fairness and of the ultimate policy objectives of human rights advocates. It would make more sense for victims' interest groups to target the failure of allegedly responsible states to afford victims the opportunity of a remedy and the failure of victims' states of nationality to do enough to defend their nationals' interests.