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Schmalenbach on Failed States

By Lawrence Solum

Kirsten Schmalenbach (University of Graz - Faculty of Law) has posted Preventing and Rebuilding Failed States (A WISER CENTURY? JUDICIAL DISPUTE SETTLEMENT, DISARMAMENT AND THE LAWS OF WAR 100 YEARS AFTER THE SECOND HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCE, T. Giegerich, ed., pp. 231-256, 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

State failure is not a new phenomenon, but the prevention and the overcoming of state failure have just only recently become a concern of the international community. The worst case scenario, a total state collapse, remains the exception, but if it does occur, it has grave consequences not only for the local population, it also poses a serious security threat for neighbouring countries. Since 9/11, monitoring of fragile states has also become an imperative to prevent private entities from utilizing the domestic power vacuum for their own criminal aims, e.g. transnational organized crime or international terrorism. From the international law perspective, preventive measures of well-meaning third states do not take place in a legal vacuum: the sovereign equality of states and the principle of non-intervention limit the imposition of preventive state-building measures upon fragile states, and reconstruction efforts after a state has collapsed have to comply with the law of occupation and the people?s right of internal political self-determination. However, a balanced view is required as to the principle of self-determination, so as to avoid legal ?birth defects? of a revived state sowing the seed of the next state failure.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on August 03, 2010 (boomark / email).