State Responsibility, International Law and theCOVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

Disruptions caused by the global spread of COVID-19 have generated different types of responsibility claims at both the domestic and international levels. Alleged breaches of the law have resulted from the immediate reactions to the pandemic’s emergence and spread, as well as from less proximate adjustments made to the ongoing crisis. This contribution begins by briefly surveying the types of responsibility relevant to the crisis with a view to identifying systemic legal issues, particularly at the international level. It then focusses on the law of state responsibility for internationally wrongful acts, not to resolve the various claims that are or can be made, but in order to identify what this crisis reveals about the trends in the law of responsibility, the opportunities for its invocation, and indeed, state tactics in engaging with this body of law. Just as the pandemic has been revelatory of social trends, so too it has highlighted trends in the law and its operation.