Is the Law of Responsibility of States for Injuries to Aliens a Part of Universal International Law?

Abstract

That a wrong done to an individual must be redressed by the offender himself or by someone else against whom the sanction of the community may be directed is one of those timeless axioms of justice without which social life is unthinkable. The most primitive form of redress which insisted on an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was not really reparation at all, but retaliation pure and simple, treated as a substitute for reparation. Measures of individual retaliation are no longer permissible in municipal law and impartial tribunals are entrusted with the duty of determining the nature and the extent of the reparation for a given wrong according to the law of the land. International law has tried to follow parallel lines of development in this respect but has failed to keep pace with municipal law, largely because of its inherent difficulties. Reprisals, which are no better than individual retaliation, continued till even the other day to be acknowledged as a legitimate mode of reparation. The Covenant of the League of Nations, while imposing restrictions on resort to war, left uncertain the right of nations to make use of force short of war, suggesting thereby that the legality of reprisals might remain untouched. The Charter of the United Nations forbids the use of force except in certain contingencies and the implication of the relevant provision may well be that reprisals are still legal as long as they do not involve the use of force.