Responsibilities in International Law
The notion of responsibility has always been a fundamental element of international legal discourse. In its traditional sense, the linkage between responsibility and liability forms the cornerstone of State responsibility as well as the responsibility of other international actors, including, inter alia, international governmental organisations, non-governmental organisations, multinational corporations and individuals. Work in the Centre has focussed not only on the development of these notions of ‘liability responsibility’ but also, more specifically, on ideas of immunity from responsibility in international law. In relation to the responsibility of individuals, the Centre’s work on individual criminal responsibility in international law highlights the importance of the Sussex Law School as one of the first Law Schools in the United Kingdom to develop research and teaching in the field of International Criminal Law.
Recognising that the notion of responsibility is broader than mere ‘liability’, work in the Centre has examined recent developments in international law, including the development of notions of ‘shared responsibility’ and ‘responsibility to protect’ to examine and critique the idea of prospective responsibility in international legal discourse. Drawing initially on the work of communitarian and feminist scholars, this work suggests that if responsibility is to move from the historic to the prospective, in terms of securing responsible behaviour, more attention should be paid to the role of responsibility as a relational concept.