Collective Responsibility and the State

ARE the citizens of a state liable for what it does in their name? It is a key principle of international law that states—as unitary legal persons—can be held responsible for their acts. When a state breaches an international obligation, it has a duty to make reparation for any injury it causes, either by making restitution, paying compensation, or providing some alternative form of satisfaction, such as an official apology. Moreover, the International Court of Justice has consistently asserted that it may order state payment of reparations when a breach of international law has occurred. Reparations have often been levied in the aftermath of aggressive war: France was required to pay reparations in 1871; Germany was required to pay reparations after World War I; Germany’s Eastern, Soviet-occupied zone paid reparations to the USSR after World War II; and today Iraq continues to pay reparations to Kuwait for the First Gulf War. In 2001 the International Law Commission produced draft articles codifying these principles of state responsibility.jopp_360 190..208 Current international law thus attributes holistic responsibility to states for their acts. On this model, the state as an organized agent is held responsible independently of its members. Of course, for the state to discharge its responsibility, liability for reparations will normally have to be distributed to members, but this distribution is performed in an independent second step. The key feature of the corporate model is that since responsibility accrues to the collective, citizens may face demands to do their part in discharging responsibility merely because they belong to the body politic. My focus in this article is primarily on this second step, the distribution of state responsibility to citizens. When is the state as a corporate agent morally entitled to pass on responsibility to its members? When reparations are levied on the state, the tax burden eventually falls on individuals, and indeed on some who may have opposed the state’s acts. Consider the case of a German in the Soviet-occupied zone after 1945, forced to contribute to reparations for Nazi