Available in Russian
Author: Alexey Ispolinov
DOI: 10.21128/2226-2059-2025-3-3-22
Keywords: abuse of law; abuse of process; international courts; general principle of law
Despite the fact that many states, courts and scholars consider the prohibition of abuse of rights to be a general principle of law, the status of this doctrine in modern international law is the subject of intense discussions. The prohibition of abuse of rights has become firmly established in modern international law as a contractual norm of a number of universal and regional international treaties. The above-mentioned practice of international courts such as the ICJ, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and the ECHR, distinguishes between abuse of rights and abuse of process and provides for different legal consequences for them. In the case of abuse of rights, a court or tribunal must refuse to satisfy the claims based on this right, and in the case of abuse of the process, such claims are not accepted. However, all of these courts do not believe that abuse of rights leads to international responsibility. In practice, international courts and tribunals have shown varying degrees of willingness to apply the prohibition on abuse of rights. On the one hand, the ICJ and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea have been notably restrained in this regard. On the other hand, the ECHR (despite its statement that the prohibition should only be applied in exceptional circumstances) has shown a tendency towards an expansive interpretation of the relevant article in the Convention. It does not seem that the prohibition of abuse of rights is a general principle of law that stems from national legal systems, but it may, under certain circumstances, become a general principle within the international legal system. On the other hand, the recognition of the prohibition of abuse of rights as a general principle of EU law by the Court of Justice of the European Union provides grounds for qualifying the prohibition as a regional general principle of law in light of Conclusion 12 of the Draft Conclusions of the International law Commission.
About the author: Alexey Ispolinov – Doctor of Sciences in Law, Professor, Russian Foreign Trade Academy, Moscow, Russia.
Citation:
Ispolinov A. (2025) Doktrina zloupotrebleniya pravom v mezhdunarodnom prave [The doctrine of abuse of rights in international law]. Mezhdunarodnoe pravosudie, vol.15, no.3, pp.3–22. (In Russian).
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