The Guiding Principles on Shared Responsibility in International Law: Too Much or Too Little?

The Guiding Principles on Shared Responsibility aim to 'substantiate the existing rules of the law of international responsibility' as they are codified in the International Law Commission's 2001 Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts and the 2011 Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations. This article examines the contribution of the Guiding Principles to the law of international responsibility and analyses some of their more controversial features, where the Guiding Principles seek to significantly expand the scope of the existing rules and, conversely, where they could have been much more ambitious.