The status of reservations in the judgments of international courts

---

The present article assessed the regime of reservations to the multilateral treaties established by the Vienna Convention of 1969 on the law of treaties based on the Advisory Opinion of 1951 of the International Court of Justice in Reservation case. This regime introduced the horizontal individual control of the states-parties to the international treaty over the compatibility of reservations to the object and purposes of the treaty in question. Nevertheless, current practice reveals that states’ failure to be involved in this mission especially in the human rights agreements might threaten the effectiveness and the very integrity of these treaties. Such a situation of laissez-faire appeared to no longer be acceptable to the regional courts of human rights (European Court of Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights) and to the controlling bodies created under the auspice of the United Nations in the framework of the universal human rights conventions. This paper reveals that the regional human rights courts and the UN quasi-judicial bodies took a position that the states lost the right to assess the validity of the reservations to the treaty in case of creation of a special controlling authority under this treaty. Moreover, the courts and quasi-judicial bodies expressed the opinion that an invalid reservation shall be severed from the act of ratification in a sense that the state making a reservation shall be bound by the entire agreement without benefiting from the reservation in question. In such a scheme the obvious problem of the status of states’ consent to be bound by the treaty under a specific condition in the form of a reservation shall be solved by the presumption that a state making a reservation implies primarily a necessity of its participation in the treaty instead of safeguarding this specific reservation. Such a robust stance of the regional human rights courts and of the universal quasi-judicial bodies on the validity of reservations in combination with the uncertainty of state practice were among the key factors prompting the International Law Commission to investigate this issue and to publish in 2011 a special non-binding documents entitled “A Guide to practice on Reservations to Treaties”. The Guidelines followed the approach of the human right courts and quasi-judicial bodies on the non-permissibility of reservations stating that such reservations shall be null and void ab initio and shall be severed from the act of ratification.

About the author: Alexey Ispolinov – Doctor of Sciences in Law, Senior Partner at “Lex-Invest” Law Firm, Moscow, Russia.

Citation: Ispolinov A. (2020) Status ogovorok v resheniyakh mezhdunarodnykh sudov [The status of reservations in the judgments of international courts]. Mezhdunarodnoe pravosudie, vol.10, no.2, pp.72–87.

References

(1995) Observations by the Governments of the United States and the United Kingdom on General Comment No.24(52) Relating to Reservations. Human Rights Law Journal, vol.16, no.10–12, pp.422–426.

Alisievich E.S. (2005) Ogovorki i zayavleniya o tolkovanii k polozheniyam Evropeyskoy konventsii po pravam cheloveka [Reservations and interpretative declarations in respect of provision of the European Convention for Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms]. Vestnik Rossiy­skogo universiteta druzhby narodov. Seriya: Yuridicheskie nauki, no.2, pp.144–151. (In Russian).

Angelini B. (2004) Trinidad and Tobago’s Controversial Death Penalty Law: A Note on Hilaire, Constantine and Benjamin v. Trinidad & Tobago. Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the Americas, vol.10, no.2, pp.361–390.

Baratta R. (2000) Should Invalid Reservations to Human Rights Treaties Be Disregarded? European Journal of International Law, vol.11, no.2, pp.413–425.

Bourguignon H.J. (1989) The Belilos Case: New Light on Reservations to Multilateral Treaties. Virginia Journal of International Law, vol.29, no.2, pp.347–386.

Bradley C., Goldsmith J. (2000) Treaties, Human Rights, and Conditional Consent. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol.149, no.2, pp.399–468.

Brazil P. (1975) Some Reflections on the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Federal Law Review, vol.6, no.2, pp.223–248.

Edwards R., Jr. (1989) Reservations to Treaties. Michigan Journal of International Law, vol.10, no.2, pp.362–405.

Ferrer Mac-Gregor E., González Domínguez P. (2015) Death Penalty, Amnesty Laws, and Forced Disappearances: Three Main Topics of the Inter-American Corpus Juris in Criminal Law. Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law, vol.5, no.1, pp.63–113.

Fitzmaurice M. (2006) On the Protection of Human Rights, the Rome Statute and Reservations to Multilateral Treaties. Singapore Yearbook of International Law, vol.10, pp.133–173.

Helfer L. (2002) Overlegalizing Human Rights: International Relations Theory and the Commonwealth Caribbean Backlash against Human Rights Regimes. Columbia Law Review, vol.102, no.7, pp.1832–1911.

Higgins R. (1989) Human Rights: Some Questions of Integrity. Modern Law Review, vol.52, no.1, pp.598–614.

Ispolinov A.S. (2017) Voprosy tolkovaniya i primeneniya Paktov o pravakh cheloveka (k 50-letiyu prinyatiya) [Issues of interpretation and application of the International Covenants of human rights (50-th anniversary of its adoption)]. Vestnik Voronezhskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, no.1, pp.303–312. (In Russian).

Kartashkin V.A. (1995) Prava cheloveka v mezhdunarodnom i vnutrigosudarstvennom prave [Human rights in international and domestic law], Moscow: Institut gosudarstva i prava Rossiyskoy akademii nauk. (In Russian).

McCall-Smith К. (2014) Severing Reservations. International and Comparative Law Quarterly, vol.63, no.3, pp.599–634.

McGrory G. (2001) Reservations of Virtue? Lessons from Trinidad and Tobago’s Reservation to the First Optional Protocol. Human Rights Quarterly, vol.23, no.3, pp.769–826.

Milanovic M., Sicilianos L-A. (2013) Reservations to Treaties: An Introduction. The European Journal of International Law, vol.24, no.4, pp.1055–1059.

Montalvo A.E. (1991) Reservations to the American Convention on Human Rights: A New Approach. American University International Law Review, vol.16, no.2, pp.269–313.

Pellet A. (2013) Reservations to Treaties and the Integrity of Human Rights. In: Sheeran S., Rodley N. (eds.) Routledge Handbook of International Human Rights Law, London; New York: Routledge, pp.323–338.

Schabas W. (1995) Invalid Reservations to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Is the United States Still a Party? Brooklyn Journal of International Law, vol.21, no.2, pp.277–325.

Schabas W. (1997) Reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law, vol.3, no.1, pp.79–112.

Simma B., Hernandez G. (2011) Legal Consequences of an Impermissible Reservation to a Human Right Treaty: Where Do We Stand? In: Cannizzaro E. (ed.) The Law of Treaties Beyond the Vienna Convention, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.60–85.

Titova T.A. (2003) Ogovorki k mezhdunarodnym dogovoram o pravakh cheloveka na primere Konventsii o pravakh rebyonka [Reservations to international treaties on the human rights: the example of the Convention on the Rights of the Child]. Moskovskiy zhurnal mezhdunarodnogo prava, no.3, pp.80–97. (In Russian).

Zimnenko B.L. (2002) Nedeystvitel'nost' ogovorok k Evropeyskoy konven­tsii o zashchite prav cheloveka i osnovnykh svobod [The invalidity of reservations to the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms]. Moskovskiy zhurnal mezhdunarodnogo prava, no.2, pp.39–49. (In Russian).