State Responsibility for Acts of Non-State Actors: A Comment on Griebel and Pluecken

Abstract

This article comments on Joern Griebel and Milan Pluecken's recent analysis in the Leiden Journal of International Law of the International Court of Justice's approach to state responsibility in its judgment in the Genocide (Bosnia v. Serbia) case. The article also provides more general remarks on the law of state responsibility as it pertains to acts of non-state actors. In that regard, it discusses attribution based on de facto organ status and attribution based on direction and control, as well as whether, as a matter of policy, the law of state responsibility meets the needs of the modern world.

Keywords: state responsibility, attribution, de facto organs, effective control, Nicaragua, Tadic, Genocide