LJIL Symposium: The Nicaragua Case: Its Impact

LJIL Symposium: The Nicaragua Case: Its Impact

[John Dugard is Professor of Law at the Universities of Leiden and Pretoria and was a Member of International Law Commission from 1997 to 2011] My comments on the impact of the Nicaragua Case are directed mainly at the article by Lori Damrosch on the implications of the decision for the International Court of Justice and international adjudication. As Andre Nollkaemper will examine Marcelo Kohen’s piece on the subject of intervention and R2P I shall comment only briefly on this article. Humanitarian intervention has a dubious status in customary international law. Most international lawyers probably take the view that it is prohibited by Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. However, some international lawyers (including the present writer) take the view that it has sufficient support in state practice and treaty law (Article 4(h) of the African Union Constitutive Act) to at least keep it alive as a residual justification for intervention when the Security Council is prevented from acting because of the veto of a permanent member – a very real possibility as evidenced by the manner in which the United States, China and Russia have used their vetoes or threatened their veto in order to protect one of their friends or surrogates accused of systematic human rights violations. Marcelo Kohen is therefore unwise to reject humanitarian intervention completely and to argue that it has been ‘replaced’ by R2P. At best humanitarian intervention without Security Council support is an important residual right; at worst it constitutes recognition of the fact that certain interventions in order to protect human rights should be seen as ‘legitimate’ albeit ‘illegal’ (see Report of Independent International Commission on Kosovo (2005) 186; T Franck Recourse to Force: State Action against Threats and Armed Attacks (2002) 180, 184). Humanitarian intervention, according to the latter view, is to be seen as euthanasia is seen in domestic law: as an intervention that is illegal but as one that may be condoned or forgiven. In essence Lori Damrosch argues that the International Court of Justice has succeeded in becoming a ‘World Court’ since the Nicaragua Case in that it has been more widely used, particularly by developing nations, but that this ‘popularity’ has been at the expense of the United States which has become more critical of the Court. I agree with this assessment but in my view Lori has understated her case.