King's College London

Under the current system, allowing states to choose which treaties and legal obligations to accept is seen as a fundamental protection of their independence and sovereignty.

However, in an article in the journal Global Constitutionalism, Dr Pavel argues it is "false to think that the virtually unlimited freedom to act protected by state consent safeguards state sovereignty".

Dr Pavel, from the Department of Political Economy, contends that in an international system where every nation possesses unrestricted freedom, no single state’s rights are truly secure. Sovereignty is a "relational concept" which depends on other countries recognising and respecting a nation's boundaries and capacity to govern.

The central flaw, according to Dr Pavel, lies in how states can evade accountability by withdrawing from international treaties or withholding consent to them. . For example, the Philippines officially withdrew from the International Criminal Court in 2019 when its leader faced investigation for human rights violations. In another example, the United States, withdrew from the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in 1986 following a case brought against it by Nicaragua.

Such selective engagement allows powerful states, such as the permanent members of UN Security Council, to violate international law "with impunity" while insisting on compliance from others.

As a solution, Dr Pavel proposes revising an existing treaty - a ‘Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 2.0’ - to renegotiate the fundamental rules of the international order related to consent. This would establish a set of non-optional duties for states and move decision-making on critical global issues from individual state consent to a majority or supermajority vote. Domains affected could include climate change, the use of force, and management of the global commons.

Without such reforms, Dr Pavel argues that international law’s "extreme reliance on state consent" has the "unintended consequence of undermining" the very sovereignty it is meant to protect.