Paddeu: A Genealogy of Force Majeure in International Law

Federica I. Paddeu (Univ. of Cambridge - Law) has posted A Genealogy of Force Majeure in International Law (British Yearbook of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The majority of legal systems of the world contain rules regulating the consequences of supervening events in the continued performance of obligations. International law regulates these consequences through a number of different provisions, force majeure being one of them. This notion, addressed as a defence to state responsibility in few texts of the early writers of international law, became fully established in the 19th century. The practice of that century affected the development of force majeure into a situation-based rule requiring impossibility of performance. Article 23 of the ILC Articles on State Responsibility reflects this development. This articles traces the development of force majeure as a relevant notion in the field of state responsibility and tests the codification work undertaken by the ILC against these developments. The article also distinguishes force majeure from other legal notions which serve to regulate the consequences of supervening events.