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30 Mich. J. Int'l L. 547 (2008-2009)
Public International Law and Its Territorial Imperative

handle is hein.journals/mjil30 and id is 557 raw text is: INTRODUCTION PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ITS TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE Dino Kritsiotis* Territory is not only the denotation of a certain physical or geo- graphical space: it also happens to be a state of mind-a given way of thinking. We know this when we come to public international law be- cause the concept of territory abounds in a multitude of its provisions-whether it be in terms of one of the qualifications for Statehood under the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States,' or on the cartographization of sovereign jurisdiction,2 or as one of the conditions for the application of certain obligations to non-State actors involved in non-international armed conflicts Territory, or the concept of territory, thus asserts itself throughout the discipline of public international law, and its influences can be felt either through di- rect means or discrete. It has informed the modes for the acquisition of sovereignty, essential to the concept of territorial sovereignty;4 it is a fundamental component in how we distinguish refugees from internally * Reader in Public International Law, University of Nottingham; Visiting Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. 1. Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, 49 Stat. 3097 (1933). 2. As Article 9 of the Montevideo Convention provides, [t]he jurisdiction of [S]tates within the limits of national territory applies to all the inhabitants. Id. art. 9; see also DAVID BRION DAVIS, INHUMAN BONDAGE: THE RISE AND FALL OF SLAVERY IN THE NEW WORLD 20 (2006); Kal Raustiala, The Geography of Justice, 73 FORDHAM L. REV. 2501 (2005). 3. This also occurs in the Second Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts, Jun. 8, 1977, 1125 U.N.T.S. 609. According to Article 1 (1) of the Protocol, whose provisions become applicable to those non-internaional armed conflicts which take place in the territory of a High Contracting Party between its armed forces and dissident armed forces or other organized armed groups which, under responsible command, exercise such control over a part of its territory as to enable them to carry out sustained and concerted military operations and to implement this Protocol. Id. at pmbl. (emphasis added). Although the Protocol develops and supplements Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (id. art. 1.), this stipulation serves to filter those non-international armed conflicts to which the Proto- col becomes applicable. It does so alongside its criterion concerning responsible command and its reference to the armed forces of the relevant High Contracting Party, considerations which are not mentioned for the activation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of August 1949-which applies [i]n the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties. See Rosemary Abi-Saab, Humanitarian Law and Internal Conflicts: The Evolution of Legal Concern, in HUMANITAR- IAN LAW OF ARMED CONFLICT: CHALLENGES AHEAD 209, 215 (1991) (Astrid J.M. Delissen & Gerard J. Tanja eds., 1991) (emphasis added). 4. J.L. BRIERLY, THE LAW OF NATIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERNATIONAL LAW OF PEACE 162 (Sir Humphrey Waldock ed., 6th ed. 1963); see also VAUGHAN LOWE, INTERNATIONAL LAW 140-44 (2007).