---
title: "State Responsibility and Sovereignty Doctrine"
description: "The ILC Articles 2001 govern state responsibility; learn attribution, breach, the circumstances precluding wrongfulness and reparation alongside sovereignty"
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/lessons/exam-international-law-state-responsibility-sovereignty"
---

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State responsibility & sovereignty

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# State responsibility & sovereignty

The law of state responsibility and sovereignty: the ILC Articles (2001), attribution, breach, circumstances precluding wrongfulness, and reparation.

## The secondary rules: ARSIWA 2001

State responsibility is the body of "secondary rules" that determine the consequences when a state breaches a "primary rule" of international law. The authoritative codification is the International Law Commission's **Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA)**, adopted in 2001 and commended to states by **UN General Assembly Resolution 56/83 (12 December 2001)**. Though not a treaty, ARSIWA is treated by the International Court of Justice as substantially reflecting customary international law; the ICJ relied on its articles in *Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Project (Hungary/Slovakia)* (1997) and *Application of the Genocide Convention (Bosnia v. Serbia)* (2007).

## The two constitutive elements

Under **ARSIWA Article 2**, an internationally wrongful act exists where conduct (an action or omission): (a) is **attributable** to the state under international law, and (b) **constitutes a breach** of an international obligation of that state. Both elements are objective; **Article 3** confirms that characterisation of an act as wrongful is governed by international law and is unaffected by its lawfulness under domestic law. This is the principle the **Permanent Court of International Justice** anticipated in the *S.S. Wimbledon* (1923) and *Chorzow Factory* (1928) cases.

## Attribution

Attribution links private or institutional conduct to the state itself. **Article 4** attributes the conduct of any state organ — legislative, executive or judicial, at any level — to the state. **Article 5** covers persons exercising elements of governmental authority; **Article 7** establishes that *ultra vires* acts of organs remain attributable even when they exceed authority or contravene instructions. The hardest questions concern private actors. The ICJ in *Nicaragua v. United States* (1986) adopted the **"effective control"** test, requiring control over the specific operations during which violations occurred; the ICTY Appeals Chamber in *Tadic* (1999) proposed a looser **"overall control"** test for armed groups, a divergence the ICJ reaffirmed against in *Bosnia v. Serbia* (2007). **Article 11** allows attribution where a state "acknowledges and adopts" conduct as its own — the basis on which the ICJ held Iran responsible in the *Tehran Hostages* case (*United States v. Iran*, 1980) once Ayatollah Khomeini endorsed the seizure of the embassy.

## Breach and its temporal dimension

**Article 12** defines breach as conduct "not in conformity with what is required" by an obligation, regardless of the obligation's origin or character. **Articles 14–15** distinguish continuing wrongful acts from composite acts. The breach must coincide with the obligation being in force for the state (**Article 13**) — the intertemporal principle articulated by arbitrator Max Huber in the *Island of Palmas* arbitration (1928). These distinctions matter for calculating the duration of a violation and the reparation owed, and recur in exam problems about ongoing occupation, prolonged detention, or sustained environmental harm.

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