The Law of State Responsibility in Relation to Border Crossings: An Ignored Legal Paradigm

This article revisits the law of State responsibility to ask whether, rather than invoking self-defense, there is a better way to conceptualize a State’s violent engagement with a non-State actor1 located in the territory of an-other State when the latter does not consent to foreign intervention and is itself unable or unwilling to stop the non-State actor from directing further attacks. In posing this question my intention should not be misinterpreted as one that seeks to identify a broader exception to the general prohibition on the use of force; in fact, it is quite the reverse. This article proposes a more legally coherent account of State practice that preserves an inter-State reading of self-defense.