From Discretion to Law: Rights-Based Concerns and the Evolution of International Sanctions

This Article considers the manner in which rights-based concerns have increasingly impacted upon the nature of international sanctions regimes. First, this Article considers two better-known instances of this impact—the manner in which general sanctions became more targeted, and the manner in which due process concerns came to receive greater respect in the context of targeting decisions. Following these investigations, this Article turns to explore a third, under-recognized development—the gradual evolution of a sense that sanctions may be required in certain instances. It explores this development by highlighting the growing scope of understandings of responsibility within various bodies of public international law, on the one hand, as well as the increasing tendency to link sanctions measures to rights-based concerns in practice, on the other.

Finally, this Article reflects on this evolution, observing the manner in which normative concerns are gradually reshaping decisions within a realm traditionally assumed to be one of political discretion.