Necessity and National Emergency Clauses

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"Diane Desierto's new book, Necessity and National Emergency Clauses: Sovereignty in Modern Treaty Interpretation, critiques the ILC's effort to codify the international law of state necessity, arguing that the ILC's formulation should be given little weight as a restatement of customary international law. Tracing the history of necessity over the centuries, Desierto shows that the classical conception of necessity as a sovereign right to self-preservation evolved significantly from Machiavelli to Grotius to Schmitt and beyond ... While these insights regarding the context-sensitive character of necessity defenses might seem modest on first impression, Desierto shows that they have far-reaching implications, calling into question some recent arbitral decisions on economic emergencies and challenging scholarly efforts to defend torture and humanitarian intervention based on appeals to necessity ... By clarifying how law-appliers should go about evaluating state necessity defenses, Desierto's study also offers broader insights for international legal theory. Desierto's fine-grained analysis in Necessity and National Emergency Clauses offers an invaluable model for how law-appliers should go about answering this question [whether the applicable treaty regime authorizes emergency measures in a given context]."
- Evan Criddle, College of Law, Syracuse University, in: American Society of International Law Cables

"This volume offers a very comprehensive analysis of the necessity doctrine and national emergency clauses in relation to treaty compliance. Desierto's insights should form a baseline for future analysis of the interpretation of the necessity doctrine in international law. This work is undoubtedly a step forward, and an original contribution as it provides interpretive answers to treaty controversies related to the doctrine of necessity."
- Georgios Andriotis, Faculty of Law, Universite de Montreal, in: Revue quebecoise de droit international

"This book is certainly the most comprehensive and scholarly literature available on interpretation of necessity and national emergency clauses. It makes a successful attempt in ?lling the gaps present in interpretations of necessity in specialised treaty regimes. Therefore, importance of this book lies not only in the fact that it explains how necessity in specialised treaties should be interpreted as suited to their speci?c needs, but also in providing a solution as to how the tribunals should apply such interpretations to these specialised treaties. Another important aspect of this books is that it identi?es those specialised treaty regimes where major controversies have already occurred due to inaccurate interpretation of necessity clause. In this respect this book by Diane A. Desierto is undoubtedly a valuable contribution in the ?eld of International Law."
- Amit Kumar Sinha Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, India, in: Indian Journal of International Law