Reprisals by Third States
![handle is hein.journals/byrint44 and id is 7 raw text is: REPRISALS BY THIRD STATES*
By DR. MICHAEL AKEHURST
Senior Lecturer in! Law, Keele University
IT is well established that a State which has been injured by a breach of
international law may take reprisals against the State which has injured it.
But may third States (i.e. States which are not the direct victims of the
breach of international law) also take reprisals against the wrong-doing
State ?
There is a long line of academic opinion which holds that third States
may take reprisals. Thus Grotius, after stating the general principle that
kings may make war in order to impose punishments (poenae) on those
who break the law, writes:
The fact must also be recognized that kings.. . have the right of demanding punish-
ments not only on account of injuries committed against themselves or their subjects,
but also on account of injuries which do not directly affect them but excessively violate
the law of nature or of nations in regard to any persons whatsoever... Truly it is more
honourable to avenge the wrongs of others rather than one's own, in the degree that in
the case of one's own wrongs it is more to be feared that through a sense of personal
suffering one may exceed the proper limit or at least prejudice his [one's] mind.
This right, he says, is derived from a similar right of individuals in a state
of nature, which they gave up to society.'
Similar views were expressed by Vattel:
The laws of the natural society of nations are so important to the welfare of every
State that if the habit should prevail of treading them under foot no nation could hope
to protect its existence or its domestic peace ... Now all men and all nations have a
perfect right to whatever is essential to their existence, since this right corresponds to
an indispensable obligation. Hence all nations may put down by force the open viola-
tion of the laws of the society which nature has established among them, or any direct
attacks upon its welfare.2
More recently several writers, such as Fauchille, Hodges, Oppenheim
and Stowell, have held that a third State may 'intervene' in order to redress
breaches of universally recognized rules of international law committed
against another State;3 since intervention is usually regarded as illegal
in the absence of some valid justification, intervention by one State to
* ( Dr. Michael Akehurst, 1970.
De Jure Belli ac Pacis, book II, chapter 20, para. 40 (Carnegie translation). He admits that
Victoria, Vizquez, Azor and Molina thought that third States had no right to make war in such
circumstances.
2 The Law of Nations: Carnegie Classics of International Law (1916), vol. 3, p. 8.
3 P. Fauchille, Traitd de droit international public, vol. i, part x (1922), p. 570; H. G. Hodges,
The Doctrine of Intervention (1915), pp. 37-8; L. Oppenheim, International Law, vol. x (8th ed.,
by H. Lauterpacht, 1955), p. 308; E. C. Stowell, Intervention in International Law (1921),
PP. 46-7.
('19161 B](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/byrint44&div=4&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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