State Succession in Respect of Human Rights Treaties

In the absence of consistent State practice, State succession in respect of treaties has long been a rather uncertain field of international law. For example, while the 1978 Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of Treaties provided, in accordance with the advice given by the International Law Commission, that a new State is bound by the international agreements binding on the predecessor State, the 1987 Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States took the opposite view. Meanwhile, scholars involved in the drafting of these instruments readily acknowledged that these standards were very open to criticism. One of the foremost authorities on the subject even observed that 'State succession is a subject altogether unsuited to the process of codification.