On Whether the Breach by a State of a Contract With an Alien is a Breach of International Law

Abstract

The question of whether the breach by a State of a contract between that State or its agency and an alien is a breach of international law has long divided States and scholars. For example, in the Ambatielos case, the Greek Government maintained that the contract between His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and Mr. M.N.E. Ambatielos was one between a State and a foreign national, with the result that, according to the admitted principles of international law, the Government of the State incurs a direct responsibility on breach of the contract, for which the Government of the foreign national thereby injured is entitled to seek redress. Greece invoked Professor Borchard's conclusion that: It is a rule, which it is believed has been accepted generally, that the contracts entered into by a State with foreigners, create obligations which the State must fulfil. With reservations as to the exhaustion of local remedies it will be responsible for the non-execution towards the foreign State. These contentions were resisted by the British Government. In the Ambatielos proceedings, it maintained that: It is plain that, according to the well-settled principles of international law, the fact that one party to the contract was a Greek national and the other a department of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, does not entitle the Greek Government, as is suggested in your note, to seek redress on behalf of its national on the ground of breach of contract. […]

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 62 citations exist upstream.