The Institutional Veil in Public International Law: International Organisations and the Law of Treaties.

• Author: Triggs, Gillian
• Position: Book review

Catherine Brolmann, The Institutional Veil in Public International Law: International Organisations and the Law of Treaties (Hart Monographs in Transnational and International Law, 2007, ISBN-13 9781841136349, hardcover, 256 pages)

Putting aside sovereign states, the most dominant actors within the international legal community have been inter-governmental organisations ('IGOs'). IGOs have entered the international arena in thousands throughout the 20th century and range from the United Nations ('UN') and the Council of Europe to the World Trade Organisation ('WTO') and the International Postal Union. As international personalities in the global legal environment, to use the language of classic international law, the nature and function of IGOs raise vital contemporary questions. In particular, the responsibility of IGOs for their internationally wrongful acts, especially in the context of military operations, environmental impacts and human rights, is now under consideration by the International Law Commission ('ILC'). Why is it, for example, that Yugoslavia was confined to applications to the International Court of justice against individual member states for compensation after the NATO bombing of Kosovo?

IGOs are to international law what companies are to national law. They have become the independent vehicle through which states can achieve their objectives in the international environment. It is not surprising therefore that, just as the company benefits from the semi-transparent 'corporate veil' at domestic law, IGOs similarly employ the 'institutional veil' to shield them from the full legal consequences of state responsibility. In MacLaine Watson v Dept of Trade, for example, the UK Court of Appeal dismissed the claim of secondary liability of member states of the International Tin Council. (1)

In her scholarly monograph, The Institutional Veil and International Responsibility, Catherine Brolmann argues that any discussion of the responsibility of IGOs for their international wrongs requires an understanding of their dual status as independent actors at international law and as a forum for sovereign states. She considers IGOs through the lens of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties ('1969 Vienna Convention'), (2) examining the historical development of IGOs as subjects of international law and their treaty practices, particularly within the UN, and their place within the classic inter-state law of treaties.

While...