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Full-Text Articles in Law

Adjudicating Genocide: Is The International Court Of Justice Capable Of Judging State Criminal Responsibility, Dermot M. Groome Sep 2007

Adjudicating Genocide: Is The International Court Of Justice Capable Of Judging State Criminal Responsibility, Dermot M. Groome

Dermot M Groome

Last February, the International Court of Justice issued a judgement adjudicating claims by Bosnia and Herzegovina that Serbia breached the 1948 Genocide Convention – the case marks the first time a state has made such claims against another. The alleged genocidal acts were the same as those that have been the subject of several criminal trials in the Yugoslav Tribunal. The judgment contained several landmark rulings – among them, the Court found that a state, as a state, could commit the crime of genocide and the applicable standard of proof for determining state responsibility is comparable to the standard used …


Coercion, Causation, And The Fictional Elements Of Indirect State Responsibility, James D. Fry Jan 2007

Coercion, Causation, And The Fictional Elements Of Indirect State Responsibility, James D. Fry

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article provides an in-depth analysis of Article 18 of the 2001 ILC Draft Articles on State Responsibility, which holds a coercing state indirectly responsible for an injurious act committed by a coerced state. Not only does this provision lack support from state practice, but the structural and logical flaws within the current formulation ensure that this provision does not significantly influence the evolution of state practice. Indeed, it would have been better for the ILC to have left Article 18 out of the Draft Articles, given that other, less problematic provisions could have covered such situations involving coercion. In …


The Ban On The Bomb – And Bombing: Iran, The U.S., And The International Law Of Self-Defense, Mary Ellen O'Connell, Maria Alevras-Chenl Jan 2007

The Ban On The Bomb – And Bombing: Iran, The U.S., And The International Law Of Self-Defense, Mary Ellen O'Connell, Maria Alevras-Chenl

Journal Articles

Since the March 2003, U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, rumors have persisted of a United States plan to attack Iran. Some U.S. officials are apparently willing to contemplate the use of military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Under international law, however, there is no right without Security Council authorization to use significant military force on the territory of another state to stop nuclear research. Knowing this, alternative arguments are being floated by those sympathetic to the plan to attack Iran. One such argument asserts that the U.S. could attack Iran on the basis of collective self-defense with Iraq …


Strict Liability In International Environmental Law, Dinah L. Shelton Jan 2007

Strict Liability In International Environmental Law, Dinah L. Shelton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The principle that a State is responsible for causing environmental harm outside its territory in breach of an international obligation has been slow to evolve to address the allocation of loss due to accidents. In settling the well-known dispute between the United States and Canada concerning the activities of the Canadian smelter located in Trail, British Columbia, the arbitral tribunal asserted a general duty on the part of the State to protect other States from injurious acts by individuals (both state and non-state actors) within its jurisdictions. The tribunal, however, noted the difficulty determining what constitutes an injurious act, but …