25 / 350
THE ILC ARTICLES ON STATE RESPONSIBILITY: A REFLECTION YEARS LATER
a State. The content of these new legal relations include the obligations of cessation
of, and reparation for, the internationally wrongful act.
26
These obligations being so
an automatic logical legal consequence of State responsibility.
Although the existing draft articles on Responsibility of States for internationally
wrongful acts are considered as an indivisible whole which should not be reopened
for negotiation, it contains proposed rules of two different domains. Those of proper
State responsibility, and those of law-enforcement of the unfulfilled responsibility
obligations by the wrongdoing State. Whilst the first one has large support in the
international community and could therefore easily be codified in a convention,
the conception of countermeasures and self-defence must be presently excluded as
institutions not stabilized for codification.
The Articles on State Responsibility may have been the last great codification
exercise undertaken by the Commission.
27
26
Cf. Art. 1 Draft Articles on State responsibility, ILC Report 2001, A/56/10, Commentary, par. 1.
27
Cf. Caron, D.D
. The ILC Articles on State Responsibility: The Paradoxical Relationship Between Form and
Authority.
AJIL, Vol. 96, No. 4, 2002, p. 859.