A look at how International Law is actually lived from the perspective of unilateral economic sanctions

Abstract

By collecting environmental data and by using an hermeneutical approach, this Article features the following working hypothesis: that the actions of modern States in the context of economic sanctions programs and imposition of sanctions by sender States against target States, either of unilateral or multilateral nature in the light of current international legal instruments, particularly the International Bill of Rights, upon being perused on the basis of two features, (a) what is sought, which is mainly seeking to change the behavior of any given State or government and (b) punishing a behavior that has been found by the sender State as wrong and illicit, observing at the same time the behavior of the sender State and the target State, the purpose of international law ends up relatively being materialized and the worlds of the ought and of the might although distinguishable in the planes of ideas, are ultimately mixed up. The idea underlying our main working hypothesis as to the imposition of economic sanctions which as their own name suggest have an extensive economic aspect, particularly when they are adopted by the United States, is that an apparent violation of international law actually shows the relative verification of its provisions and that law and politics are mixed up and inevitably intertwined. In that sense and contrary to what may be extensively suggested, public international law is complied with even if the imposition of economic sanctions as they are imposed today may suggest otherwise.