State Immunity and Human Rights Before National and International Courts

• Autor(a) principal: Rodrigues, Guilherme Bonácul
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/2/2135/tde-29072016-050908/
• topic: argumentação em direito internacional; direitos humanos; human rights; imunidade estatal; international legal argumentation; international legal theory; state immunity; teoria do direito internacional

State immunity has undergone major changes over time and is still a highly controversial and hotly debated topic. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between human rights and the norms governing state immunity. Located in different geological strata of international law, the clashes between the law of state immunity and human rights drew attention to the struggle among competing conceptions of international law. On one hand, being commonly linked to the principle of sovereign equality and to the need for stability in international relations, state immunity operates when a domestic court cannot exercise jurisdiction over the subject matter of a dispute because one of the parties is a foreign state. On the other, human rights have a different logic and require change and the realization of justice. The development of the body of human rights law allowed to call into question the grant of state immunity in cases in which human rights norms were violated. Legal questions arising from the relationship between state immunity and human rights have been put before domestic and international courts. Having examined the various judgments dealing with these issues, this study contends that the answers to the technical and dogmatic questions originating from the encounter between state immunity and human rights reproduce theoretical conflicts which happen - to use Koskenniemi\'s expression - at a \'higher level of abstraction\'. The ICJ\'s judgment in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State may have crystallized a consensus according to which state immunity trumps the individual\'s right to reparation for serious violations of human rights. This consensus, however, is contingent and can be questioned through the language of international law.