Indirect responsibility in the contemporary law of State responsibility

This book is about indirect responsibility under the general international law of State responsibility. Such responsibility arises when the law attributes an act by the organ of a State to a second State or to multiple States. The book discusses the following situations:
- Direction and control under neutral circumstances
- Direction and control during a belligerent occupation
- Direction and control in a relationship of dependence
- Direction and control accompanied by coercion
- Connivance in acts that take place on the State’s own territory
- Multiple States designating the same entity as a State organ (common organs)
- Organs placed at the disposal of another State
- Organs of one State carrying out a mandate on behalf of another State
- Adoption of responsibility for the act of another State
- Adoption of responsibility for the act of a predecessor State
In addition, the book reviews – and rejects – claims that indirect responsibility occurs from:
- Providing heavy support
- Behaving unlawfully with others leading to the obscuring of the responsible State
- Engaging in a joint enterprise or plan with other States
- Acting within a single internationally wrongful act that is composited from various States’ acts
The book aims to serve both practitioners and scholars of international law. Practitioners will appreciate the neutral description and classification of relevant precedent. Scholars may be interested in the search for the basis of responsibility (which is traced to the concepts of control, governmental authority and freedom to assume obligation). Both audiences may benefit from the central argument: that a State virtually always becomes responsible for the conduct of another State – but not for the latter’s internationally wrongful act.