The Legal Dimension of the International Community: How Community Interests Are Protected in International Law

Abstract

This article uses the emergence of the protection of community interests in international law as a theoretical framework to explain a number of legal notions and regimes, such as jus cogens, obligations erga omnes, international responsibility towards the international community as a whole, and individual criminal responsibility. With reference to various international conventions, the work of the International Law Commission, and the case law of different international tribunals, it describes how changes in social intercourse at the global level have entailed structural transformations of the international legal order, as well as tensions caused by the concurrent legal protection of community and individual interests. The article further explains how the proposed theoretical framework may be used to address several concrete issues which have arisen in the contemporary legal debate, such as the question of exceptions to the immunity of state officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction, countermeasures by states other than the injured state in international responsibility, the legal regime of jus cogens, etc.