Reflections on State Responsibility for Violations of Explicit Protectorate, Mandate, and Trusteeship Obligations

Abstract

William Bishop's high standards of personal ethics, factual accuracy and scrupulous honesty marked his relationships with his colleagues, and his scholarly work. I knew him first through his written work and later as a colleague on the Board of Editors of the American Journal ofInternational Law. As a person, he was unfailingly courteous (it is impossible to imagine him otherwise); as a scholar, he was rigorous and thorough; as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal, he was demanding and discriminating, but always tolerant and fair. He accepted my first article. Because he was not a member of the New Haven School, I awaited his editorial comments with a certain trepidation - needlessly. His comments were pertinent and challenging. The result was a better article, a transformation he seemed to effect in everything he did. He was a superior man. Given his personality and personal principles, it was not surprising that Professor Bishop should have chosen the area of State Responsibility as his field of special concentration. Anyone who dealt with him encountered a person who appreciated the benefits of civil exchange and who comported himself in all exchanges according to high standards. Those two impulses, of course, animate State Responsibility. I should like, in his memory, to explore in a most tentative way some possible applications of the law of State Responsibility for violations of undertakings by stronger states to weaker states during the colonial period.