ABSTRACT
International law is usually perceived as a system governing inter-State relations, whereby States are regarded as the primary actors operating on the international plane. As the principal addressees of international rights and obligations, States perform central roles in the creation and application of international law. This view, widely accepted as an attribute of positivist international legal scholarship, has produced lasting practical and doctrinal effects.1 It has severely limited the scope for the direct regulation of non-State actors that significantly affect the enjoyment of fundamental human rights. Instead, States are tasked with the primary responsibility to regulate potential threats occurring within their jurisdiction. The practical failings of this approach will be explored in greater depth later; the aim of the present chapter is twofold. First, it seeks to contextualise the historical emergence, development and theoretical underpinnings of the State-centric conception of international law. Second, the chapter serves an underlying critical purpose, in that it aims to expose the weaknesses of the core theoretical concepts upon which State-centric scholarship is built. It will demonstrate that the dominance of the territorial State system is a relatively recent,2 Western phenomenon,3 built on uncertain, ill-defined constructs that, in today’s globalised world, fail to reflect diminished State power and are unable to respond effectively to the threats posed by non-State entities.
