The law of State responsibility is the chapter of international law that concerns the breach

by a State of one or more of its international obligations. In international law,

responsibility is the corollary of obligation; every breach by a subject of international law
of its international obligations entails its international responsibility. The law of State
responsibility defines when an international obligation is to be held to have been
breached, as well as the consequences of that breach, including which States are entitled
to react, and the permissible means of that reaction.
Unlike national laws, wherein different rules often apply according to the source of the
obligation breached (e.g., contract law, tort law, criminal law), international law does not
concern itself with the source of the obligation that is breached; in principle (and unless
otherwise specifically provided) the same rules apply to the breach of an obligation
whether the source of the obligation is a treaty, customary international law, a unilateral
declaration, or the judgment of an international court.
In August 2001 the International Law Commission completed its Articles on the
Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA), a project on
which it had been working for more than forty years. The aim of the articles is to codify
the generally applicable rules of State responsibility.
It should be noted that the ARSIWA are envisaged as laying down general rules that
apply in default of any more specific rule applicable to the obligation in question. In
some cases, special rules may apply to an obligation (either as a result of the formulation
of the rule itself, or because the obligation in question forms part of a special regime); for
instance, it is possible that a particular obligation may be subject to a special rule
requiring fault or damage before there is held to be a breach, or it may be that the
category of States entitled to react is wider than the default position under the ARSIWA.
This is the principle of lex specialis (to the extent that special rules are applicable and
inconsistent with the rules contained in the ARSIWA, the special rules will prevail and
displace the more general rules).
On 12 December 2001, the General Assembly of the United Nationswelcomed the
conclusion of the work of the International Law Commission(‘ILC’) on the responsibility
of states for internationally wrongful acts an its adoption of the draft articles and the
commentary on the subject. It commended the Articles to the attention of governments
without prejudice to the question of their future adoption or other appropriate action.Thus
one of the few remaining traditional topics of codification was success-fully concluded
45 years after the first Special Rapporteur F.V. GarcíaAmador (1956–1963) began his
work on the subject. Despite GarcíaAmador’s initial enthusiasm,his approach had not
been approved by the ILC, partly because he considered the law on state responsibility as
being confined to the substantive rules on diplomatic protection. The present article aims
at presenting an outline of th Article focussing on the main changes made during the
process of second reading 6 and discussing the most important and most debated
provisions of the text. It will conclude with a first and rather tentative evaluation of the
Articles and their probable impact on the law of state responsibility in the future.