[Gregor Noll is a Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law at Lund University in Sweden, and is an expert in International, Theory of International, and Refugee and Migration Law.]
With admirable calm and clarity, Maarten den Heijer’s text considers the relationship between territorial sovereignty and diplomatic inviolability played out in diplomatic asylum. Describing both poles as ‘legal trump cards’ in their own right, he argues the insolubility of their conflict in law. He writes ‘that the status quo, although not guaranteeing a uniform of “just” practice of diplomatic asylum, provides a befitting equilibrium between the right of the receiving and sending states’. This equilibrium, befitting or otherwise, ‘puts incentives into place for avoiding and resolving disputes by diplomatic means’. As it were, the international law of diplomatic asylum is incapable to offer more at this historical stage.
I greatly appreciate den Heijer’s ability to keep that conflict alive throughout his eminently readable text. At large, I have no quarrel with his conclusion. Yet I feel a bit hesitant to align myself fully with it yet. This is mainly for two reasons, both related to the way he tells the story of diplomatic asylum.
