Aust: Legal Consequences of Serious Breaches of Peremptory Norms in the Law of State Responsibility: Observations in the Light of the Recent Work of the International Law Commission

Helmut Aust (Freie Universität Berlin - Law) has posted Legal Consequences of Serious Breaches of Peremptory Norms in the Law of State Responsibility: Observations in the Light of the Recent Work of the International Law Commission (in Peremptory Norms of General International Law: Perspectives and Future Prospects, Dire Tladi ed., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The paper deals with the legal consequences of serious breaches of peremptory norms under general international law. After setting out some aspects of the complex relationship between jus cogens and the law of state responsibility, the contribution presents the recent work of the UN International Law Commission (ILC) on these questions. This work is contextualised in the light of the debates in the Sixth Committee of the UN General Assembly. The contribution discusses to what extent the Commission has offered the international community of States merely an ‘effort to imagine’ hypothetical consequences of breaches of jus cogens – or whether the special consequences for serious breaches of peremptory norms of general international law are now indeed firmly accepted in international law. In particular, the paper assesses recent practice with respect to the three additional consequences that the ILC included in the Articles on State Responsibility in 2001 – the obligation of cooperation as well as the obligations to refrain from recognizing situations brought about by serious breaches of peremptory norms as lawful and to render aid or assistance for maintaining such situations.