Causation In International Law

In this cutting-edge book, Alexander Orakhelashvili addresses the doctrine of causation, examining its suitability to influence, or contribute to, the process of responsibility of State and non-State actors in international law. In doing so, the book considers the record so far and places the international legal system's practical experience within its normative context. Split into four chapters, the book begins by examining the workings of causation across various national legal systems, including the common law and the civil law systems. The central second chapter considers the doctrine of causation within the structure of the law of State responsibility for internationally wrongful acts, focusing mainly on the ways in which causation is both adopted and bounded within the international legal system. The next chapter deals with the practice of international courts and tribunals relating to causation, including the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, and the final chapter offers some critique of secondary literature on causation and related issues arising in national and international law. Deeply grounded in evidence, illuminating, comprehensive and timely, Causation in International Law will be key reading for academics, postgraduate students and practising lawyers in the areas of public international law and legal theory.

In this cutting-edge book, Alexander Orakhelashvili addresses the doctrine of causation, examining its suitability to influence, or contribute to, the process of responsibility of State and non-State actors in international law. In doing so, the book considers the record so far and places the international legal system’s practical experience within its normative context.

This book takes an original and comparative approach to issues of causation in tort law across many European legal systems.

A clear, critical analysis of proof of causation in the law of tort in England, France and Germany.

The focus of this edited volume is the often-overlooked importance of secondary rules of international law. Secondary rules of international law-such as attribution, causality, and the standard and burden of proof-have often been neglected in scholarly literature and have seen fragmented application in international legal practice. Yet the systemic nature of international law entails that coherent and consistent application of such rules is a key element in reinforcing the legitimacy of decisions of international courts and tribunals. Accelerated development of international law and international litigation, coupled with the fragmented nature of the adjudicatory terrain calls for theoretical scrutiny and systemic analysis of the developments in the judicial treatment of secondary rules. This publication makes three important contributions to the study of secondary rules. First, it offers a comprehensive, expert doctrinal analysis of how standard of review, causation, evidentiary rules, and attribution operate in the case law of international courts or tribunals in fields spanning human rights, trade, investment, and humanitarian law. Second, it comparatively evaluates the divergent layers of meanings and normative expectations attached to secondary rules in international law scholarship as well as in the judicial practice of international courts and tribunals. Finally, the book investigates the role that secondary rules play in the development of the primary rules in international law and for the legitimacy of the decisions of international courts and tribunals. Earlier scholarly works have not problematized the role of secondary rules of international law in adjudication thoroughly. Secondary Rules of Primary Importance in International Law seeks to fill this gap by emphasizing the consequential nature of these secondary rules and argues that the outcome of litigation is fundamentally shaped by the exact standard of proof, standard of review, or attribution basis that is chosen by adjudicators. As such, the book offers an important resource for the study and practice of international law against the backdrop of the wide-ranging and fragmented nature of international adjudication.

Elucidates the concept of causation in competition law damages and outlines its practical implications through relevant case law.

Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of the will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in ethics, whether there is a moral distinction between acts and omissions and whether the moral value of an act can be judged according to its consequences. And causation is a contested concept in other fields of enquiry, such as biology, physics, and the law. This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of these and other topics, as well as the history of the causation debate from the ancient Greeks to the logical empiricists. The chapters provide surveys of contemporary debates, while often also advancing novel and controversial claims; and each includes a comprehensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading. The book is thus the most comprehensive source of information about causation currently available, and will be invaluable for upper-level undergraduates through to professional philosophers.

Whenever the question of state responsibility in investor-state arbitration arises, the following causal question must be analysed: has the state conduct caused the investor's investment loss? To answer this question, arbitral tribunals apply the approach advocated for by the International Law Commission, which in turn is the approached used by domestic courts. This is a two-tiered approach where the factual causality and legal causality of the state conduct is tested. This contribution argues that adopting this approach into the jurisprudence of international investment law was an error. Specifically, the process of testing for legal causation has no place in international investment law and should be extracted from it. Not only are attempts by arbitral tribunals to test for legal causality likely to lead to low-quality legal reasoning, which can only adversely impact the legitimacy of the international adjudication of investor-state disputes, the reasons for undertaking this process in domestic tortious disputes are not applicable to investor-state disputes. This extraction of legal causation will not lead to indeterminate state liability towards investors. For a number of reasons, the problem of infinite causality in legal disputes is more theoretical than real. With this extraction, a bespoke approach to analysing causal questions in international investment law is produced.