Originally from American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA

Preview Page

I. INTRODUCTION

That an individual is usually considered to lack the requisite procedural capacity to maintain a claim before international bodies vested with authority to hear arguments regarding substantive international legal principles is a matter of hornbook law.[1] Indeed, as indicated by the Permanent Court of International Justice in the Mavrommatis case, disputes between an individual and a nation-state are generally not even cognizable in international law until the country of nationality of the individual concerned takes up the claim on the individual's behalf.[2] Nation-states, however, possess the authority to grant to individuals the power to advance their own claims before international bodies[3] and one common area where that has been done concerns international human rights conventions.[4] But outside the field of human rights, a real reluctance to empower individuals to maintain international claims characterizes the practice of nation-states, and the examples of such that do exist do not seem systematically and purposefully connected with international economic law.