State Intent Under International Law

Authors

• Stephen Townley, Clooney Foundation for Justice

Abstract

The question of legislative intent has long been a topic of intense scholarly focus in the United States. There has also been a recent uptick in discussion of executive branch intent with the filing of highprofile lawsuits predicated upon allegations of improper motives. However, there has been no corollary effort to unpack the concept of state intent at the international level, where it arises with respect to such varied questions as how to understand the scope of a state's consent, whether a state should be deemed to be negotiating in good faith, and whether a state has engaged in genocide. This Article seeks to fill this gap, offering a taxonomy of state intent under international law. It also offers a potential explanation for why one might wish to apply different models of state intent, distinguishing, for instance, between the use of intent to rule out "excluded reasons "for acting (as is the case under U.S. law with respect to discrimination) and the use of intent to better understand what is being communicated (as is sometimes the case with respect to statutory interpretation). Finally, the Article draws an analogy to inquiries into corporate intent under U.S. domestic law to chart a tentative path forward toward better understanding the intent of states.

Disciplines

Comparative and Foreign Law | Constitutional Law | Evidence | Immigration Law | International Law | Law | Law and Race | President/Executive Department

Recommended Citation

Stephen Townley, State Intent Under International Law, 3 Cardozo Int’l & Compar. L. Rev. 403 (2020).
Available at: https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/ciclr/vol3/iss2/5