ABSTRACT
The time seems to have co me to reassess the international law of state responsibility. Several questions are presented by current developments in the theory and practice of attributing international legal responsibility to a sovereign state. What are the legal basis and the legal consequences of state responsibility? Which states have a legal interest in attributing state responsibility? Finally, has the structural function of international responsibility inside the international legal system evolved during the last decade?l
Until a few years ago, asking such questions would have only revealed very deep gaps in the legal knowledge of the questioner. The answers were clear and relatively simple. At least from the end of the nineteenth century, due largely to the effects of the positivist doctrine, the unity of the theory of international state responsibility had been strongly established. 2 This unity concerned both the origin (fait generateur) of the responsibility and its specific function. The origin of the responsibility arose in the commission of a wrongful act by astate, in particular, an act or omission by the state violating its international obligation vis-a-vis another state. 3 Additionally, the great majority of
authors agreed that the unique function of the institution of state responsibility was to secure reparation for damages created by the wrongful act,4 since its only legal consequence was to burden the responsible state with the subsidiary obligation to make reparations for the tortious results of its wrongful act.
