STATE RESPONSIBILITY UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW: ANALYZING THE DRAFT ARTICLES ON RESPONSIBILITY OF STATES FOR INTERNATIONALLY WRONGFUL ACTS

The international legal order, unlike domestic legal systems, does not rest upon a centralised enforcement authority. Its coherence instead depends on a body of secondary rules that determine when a State has breached its obligations and what legal consequences follow from that breach. These secondary rules are collectively known as the law of State responsibility. Every primary obligation that a State owes, whether arising from treaty, custom, or a unilateral act, is rendered meaningful only when its breach triggers a determinate set of consequences. Without such a framework, international law would remain a system of aspirational commitments rather than binding norms. The most authoritative articulation of this framework is found in the International Law Commission's Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, adopted on second reading in 2001 after nearly five decades of study. Although the Draft Articles were never opened for signature as a treaty, the General Assembly commended them to States and they are now widely regarded as reflecting customary international law on the subject. This article examines the structure of the Draft Articles, focusing on attribution, breach, circumstances precluding wrongfulness, and the content of responsibility, before turning to the persistent gaps between the codified text and actual State practice.