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4 Cambridge J. Int'l & Comp. L. 616 (2015)
The Right to Be Free from Economic Coercion

handle is hein.journals/cajoincla4 and id is 634 raw text is: 










The Right to be Free from Economic Coercion


Antonios Tzanakopoulos*


Abstract
This article seeks to determine if there is a fundamental right of states to be free from economic
coercion, against the background of international law permitting economic coercion as a means for
its own implementation. After defining coercion and other cognate terms, the article surveys the
limits to (economic) countermeasures and (economic) sanctions, and determines that any 'sphere
of economic freedom' of states is essentially a relative concept, without an irreducible core. Public
international law does not currently establish a fundamental right of states to be free from economic
coercion-though one should probably be established.

Keywords
Fundamental Rights of States, Freedom, Coercion, Economic Coercion, Countermeasures,
Sanctions, Intervention




1    Introduction

The element of coercion, the coercive sanction, is a fundamental attribute of positive
law; its coercive force is what distinguishes law from other normative systems, such
as morals.2 In the highly centralised domestic legal order, it is the state itself that has
the power to impose coercive sanctions in accordance with the law. By contrast, in the
decentralised international legal orders, the coercive sanction is a faculty left to the
(directly or indirectly) injured state to impose.3 The coercive sanctions of international


   Associate Professor of Public International Law, University of Oxford; Fellow, St Anne's College, Oxford
   (UK). Many thanks are due to Eleni Methymaki and Anna Ventouratou for their excellent research
   assistance, as well as to the participants in the 'Rights of States' workshop at the University of Alabama,
   School of Law, in April 2015, for their useful comments. 'the usual disclaimer applies.
1 See Hans Kelsen, introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory: A Translation fI the First Edition of the Reine
   Rechtslehre or Pure 7heor, of Law (B Litschewski Paulson and SL Paulson trs, OUP 1997) 26.
2 For a thorough, though critical, analysis of Kelsen's approach to the interplay between the national and the
   international legal order, see generally Francois Rigaux, 'Hans Kelsen on International Law' (1998) 9 EJIL
   325.
a See, eg, International Law Commission (ILC), Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts,
   UNGA Res 56/83 (28 January 2002) UN Doc A/RFS/56/83 (ILC Articles on State Responsibility) arts 42,
   48. The term 'indirectly' injured state is used here to denote art 48's 'State other than the injured State'.
   See Linos- Alexander Sicilianos, 'The Classification of Obligations and the Multilateral Dimension of the
   Relations of International Responsibility' (2002) 13 EJIL 1127, 1138.

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