The institutional veil in public international law

Catherine Brölmann

"This book deals with the nature of international organisations and the tension between their legal nature and the system of classic, state-based international law. This tension is important in theory and practice, particularly when organisations are brought under the rule of international law and have to be conceptualised as legal subjects, for example in the context of accountability. The position of organisations is complicated by what the author terms 'the institutional veil', comparable to the corporate veil found in corporate law. The book focuses on the law of treaties, as this pre-eminently 'horizontal' branch of international law brings out the problem particularly clearly. The first part of the book addresses the legal phenomenon of international organisations, their legal features as independent concepts, the history of international organisations and of legal thought in...

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