ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to outline the principles pertaining to the area of ‘state succession’ which as a subject should be distinguished from the related topic of ‘succession of governments’. It has been said on more than one occasion that the area of state succession is one of the less clearly defined areas of public international law. Thus, the Badinter Commission established by the Conference on Yugoslavia could assert that ‘there are few well established principles of international law that apply to state succession. Application of these principles is largely to be determined case by case, though the 1978 and 1983 Vienna Conventions do offer some guidance’. Similar sentiments have been expressed by municipal courts. One of the problems in this area is that the expression ‘state succession’ is used to describe a wide number of different factual situation and it is misleading to embark on analogies with private law where on death or personal and corporate insolvency legislation provides for the assets of the prior legal person to vest or fall under the control of another legal person. In most municipal systems such rules will be established by legislation and are routinely applied each year in large numbers of cases.
