Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Wrongful Lying by States

Research

Electronic data

  • Wrongful_Lying_by_States_BlueBook

    Rights statement: I have an author agreement that provides: The Author grants to the Journal exclusive worldwide first publication rights in the Work, and other rights as are enumerated below. The Author retains the right... iii. To post the Work, in whole or in part, on an Internet or Intranet site over which the Author has effective control provided that such Work or post identifies the Author, the Journal, the title, the volume, the number of the first page, and the year of the Work’s publication in the Journal. iv. To reserve the right to distribute draft copies of the Work prior to publication in any manner customary to academic communications, including electronic distribution on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN), provided that the reproduction includes notice that it is a draft, and that publication will be forthcoming in the Journal, and further provided that the posted draft is replaced with a link to the published version and/or an abstract upon publication.

    Accepted author manuscript, 477 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: Other

View graph of relations

Wrongful Lying by States

Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article

Forthcoming
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>18/04/2022
<mark>Journal</mark>Cornell Journal of International Law
Volume55
Publication StatusAccepted/In press
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

In 2020, a war of words broke out between America and China over the origins of Covid-19, with both accusing the other of telling lies. The problem is that there is nothing in the contemporary doctrine and literature to explain whether State lying is, or should be, considered wrongful, as a matter of international law. This work fills this lacuna by taking the insights from speech act theory to explain why (and when) State lying should be regulated, as one part of the international law on insincere State utterances. Using the rules of language use, the article first uncovers an existing body of law on insincere State utterances, whereby the State is taken to mean what it says, when States are co-ordinating their plans of action (the lex lata). The work then argues that this legal principle should be extended to include State lying (the lex ferenda), because lies are insincere speech actions, made with the intention of deceiving other States.