Yarwood Lisa. State Accountability under International Law. Holding States Accountable for a Breach of Jus Cogens Norms

Routledge, 2011. — 182 p.This book considers the extent to which states are held accountable for breaches of jus cogens norms under international law. The concept of state accountability is distinguished from the doctrine of state responsibility and refers to an ad hoc practice in international relations that seeks to ensure that states do not escape with impunity when they violate norms that are considered fundamental to the interests of the international community as a whole. State Accountability under International Law sets forth a definition of state accountability and establishes a threshold against which the existence, or not, of state accountability can be determined. Using a Foucauldian influenced interpretive methodology, this book adopts a novel construction of state accountability as having legal, political and even moral characteristics. It argues that the international community seeks to hold states accountable utilising a variety of traditional and non-traditional responses that cumulatively recognize that the institutions that comprise and legitimise the state were instrumental in the particular breach. Using case studies taken from state practice from throughout the 20th century and covering a range of geographic contexts, the conclusion is that there is evidence that state accountability, as it is conceptualised here, is evolving into a legal principle.