State Immunity, Human Rights, and Jus Cogens: A Critique of the Normative Hierarchy Theory

Abstract

When Sulaiman Al-Adsani traveled from the United Kingdom to Kuwait to repel Saddam Hussein’s invasion in 1991, he never dreamed he would depart with bruises and burns inflicted by the very government he had sought to defend. According to Al-Adsani, his troubles began when he was accused of releasing sexual videotapes of Sheikh Jaber Al-Sabah Al-Saud Al-Sabah, a relative of the emir of Kuwait, into general circulation. After the first Gulf war, with the aid of government troops, the sheikh exacted his revenge by breaking into Al-Adsani’s house, beating him, and transporting him to a Kuwaiti state prison, where his beatings continued for days. Al-Adsani was subsequently taken at gunpoint in a government car to the palace of the emir’s brother, where his ordeal intensified. According to Al-Adsani, his head was repeatedly submerged in a swimming pool filled with corpses and his body was badly burned when he was forced into a small room where the sheikh set fire to gasoline-soaked mattresses.

La no consideración del elemento daño dentro de la responsabilidad estatal en materia de derechos humanos

“…Cabe recalcar, además, que -como lo aclara el numeral 2 del artículo 1 de la Convención Americana sobre Derechos Humanos (en adelante, CADH)-«persona» es todo ser humano 34 , lo cual "rea rma la idea de la universalidad de los derechos humanos y de la prohibición de discriminación, [y] deja fuera del campo de protección a las personas jurídicas" 35 . Por último, es menester considerar que adicionalmente a las obligaciones convencionales, un gran sector de la doctrina en Derecho Internacional Público, y especí camente en DIDH, reconoce la existencia de un conjunto de normas que, si bien no tienen un origen convencional, son tan fundamentales que se han convertido en preceptos internacionales perentorios: las normas de ius cogens 46 . Así, "[l]a idea de ius cogens no puede ser disociada de la idea de un corpus de normas jurídicas que se imponen a todos los Estados, cuya existencia no depende de una inequívoca manifestación de voluntad" 47 .…”

Breaking the Cycle of Deferment: Jus Cogens in the Practice of International Law

“…71 Certainly, this course of action may undermine the principle of separation of powers, as it would transfer foreign-policymaking endeavours from the hands of state politicians to the judiciary. 72 Correspondingly, if the court decided to conduct such an inquiry, it is likely that states will perceive the court as having a much greater discretion on the topic compared to other areas of international law. As a result, procedural legitimacy comes into play, since the courts choosing one interpretation of jus cogens over another might question whether the court is driven by a preference for one of the parties to a case.…”

The “International Community’S Interests” Element of the State of Necessity Test: Does It Make the Jus Cogens Limitation on Necessity Superfluous?

“…The concept of general international law peremptory norms was defined in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, adopted in 1969 (Article 53) and further developed by international judiciary, state practice and legal doctrine. Despite some criticism (Brownlie, 1988), it is widely employed not only in the area of law of treaties, but more broadly in relation to issues of States' jurisdiction (Nagle, 2011) and immunities (Potesta, 2010;Caplan, 2003), in international human rights law (Bianchi, 2008;Simma & Alston, 1992), in the field of international responsibility (Weatherall, 2015;Tams & Asteriti, 2013), etc. Since 2015 the topic of jus cogens has been included into the ILC's program of work and in 2019 it adopted on first reading the Text of the draft conclusions on peremptory norms of general international law (jus cogens) (hereafter -Text of the draft conclusions on jus cogens).…”