Encoding the law of State responsibility with courage and resolve: James Crawford and the 2001 Articles on State Responsibility

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

The breadth of James Crawford’s work as an academic and practitioner of international law is astonishing: from boundary delimitation to foundational sources questions to the complexities of annulment in investment arbitration, little seemed beyond his grasp or interest. From the 1990s onwards, State responsibility became a focus of his work, guiding the International Law Commission (ILC) through a swift second reading of the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (Articles). The eventual text, adopted in 2001 and annexed to United Nations General Assembly resolution 56/83, while reflecting a collective ILC effort, bears his imprint. This contribution takes three observations by Crawford as prompts for a discussion of both his role in their crafting and of the Articles’ place in contemporary international law. First, the Articles have ‘encoded the way we think about [State] responsibility’. Second, this encoding exercise marked ‘a step in the direction of profitable generalization’. Finally, the fact that this exercise resulted in a formally non-binding text has permitted ‘the Articles as part of the fabric of general international law to be consolidated and refined’ in the day-to-day interpretation and application of international law. The article concludes with brief remarks on their future status.

Original languageEnglish
JournalCambridge International Law Journal
Volume11
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)6-23
Number of pages18
ISSN2398-9173
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.06.2022
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author.

    Research areas

  • Articles on State Responsibility, International Law Commission, internationally wrongful act, James Crawford, State responsibility
  • Law

    ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Law

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. The Influence of Robots’ Emotion Expressions on the Uncanny-Valley-Effect
  2. A holistic view on security and collaboration in safe space
  3. Organizing Events for Configuring and Maintaining Creative Fields
  4. Early subtropical forest growth is driven by community mean trait values and functional diversity rather than the abiotic environment
  5. Designing and evaluating a crew resource management training for manufacturing industries
  6. An interdisciplinary methodological guide for quantifying associations between ecosystem services
  7. Markups and Concentration in the Context of Digitization
  8. University, failed
  9. A comparison of the strength of biodiversity effects across multiple functions
  10. Laser Scanning Point Cloud Improvement by Implementation of RANSAC for Pipeline Inspection Application
  11. Studying embodied encounters
  12. Learning to rule
  13. Induced Technological Change: Exploring its Implications for the Economics of Atmospheric Stabilization
  14. The dependency of the banks’ assets and liabilities
  15. Comment on “Stretching intervention can prevent muscle injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis”
  16. To settle or protect? A global analysis of net primary production in parks and urban areas
  17. Using Multi-Label Classification for Improved Question Answering
  18. A switching model predictive control for overcoming a hysteresis effect in a hybrid actuator for camless internal combustion engines
  19. Why Being Democratic is Just Not Enough
  20. More than a YouTube Channel
  21. Chronic effects of a static stretching intervention program on range of motion and tissue hardness in older adults