About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

55 Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 343 (2016-2017)
Beyond States and Non-State Actors: The Role of State-Empowered Entities in the Making and Shaping of International Law

handle is hein.journals/cjtl55 and id is 346 raw text is: Beyond States and Non-State Actors: The Role of State-Empowered Entities in the Making and Shaping of International Law SANDESH SIVAKUMARAN* Traditionally, the actors in the international legal sys- tem are divided into States and non-state actors; and States are considered to be the ones that make and shape international law. By contrast, this Article ar- gues that there is a third category of actors, namely state-empowered entities, which have been empow- ered by States to make and shape international law. These entities are not States, but due to their empow- erment by States, they are also not non-state actors. Accordingly, they constitute a category in and of themselves. Entities of this type include the Interna- tional Law Commission, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The making and shaping of interna- tional law includes the interpretation, application, and development of the law. States continue to play a role in the making and shaping of international law, for example, through establishing the mandate of the state-empowered entity, feeding their views into the work product of the entity, and assessing the final out- put of the entity. However, in practice, States rarely engage with the work-product of state-empowered en- tities and, in failing so to engage, have ceded some of their influence in lawmaking. This silence on the part of States has been treated as acquiescence to the work-product of state-empowered entities and the gap * Professor of Public International Law, University of Nottingham. I am grateful to Professors Mary Footer, Franqoise Hampson, Marko Milanovid, Anthea Roberts, Sangeeta Shah, Antonios Tzanakopoulos, and Fuad Zarbiyev for comments on earlier drafts of this Article. I am also grateful to the Editors of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law for their work on this Article, in particular, to Kate Saba and Anjli Parrin for their helpful comments.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most