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When Hall and Oppenheim were writing, the absolutist ideology that led Grotius to equate state and king was long overcome. Henry Wheaton, as an American untainted by absolutist European ideas, had made it clear that “the peculiar objects of international law are those direct relations which exist between nations and states.”198 References to kings and princes used by earlier writers he explains as mere figures of speech:Wherever, indeed, the absolute or unlimited monarchical form of government prevails in any State, the person of the prince is necessarily identified with the State itself: L’Etat c’est moi. Hence the public jurists frequently use the terms sovereign and State as synonymous. So also the term sovereign is sometimes used in a metaphorical sense merely to denote a State, whatever may be the form of its government, whether monarchical, or republican, or mixed.199 Oppenheim’s work, written when his home country’s monarch already had lost most of its power, reflects this shift away from Grotius’s first premise. Original responsibility cannot only be incurred through acts of the head of state, but also through acts of each member of government. However, he is still unable to depart from Grotius’s other basic premise. Oppenheim still clings to the fault requirement, which Grotius claimed to have derived from the jus gentium, even though the respect for this source of law had steadily declined from the 17th century onwards. As early as 1612, Suarez had redefined the meaning of the jus gentium. 200 Suarez argued that the private law part of the jus gentium, which states observe within their borders, be called “civil law,” while the term jus gentium should refer to an international legal order derived from custom and not natural reason.201 While Suarez’s critique was mostly disregarded by his successors,202 the attack Joseph Story levelled against the jus gentium in his Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws (1834) was influential.203 To justify the formulation of non-substantive rules today known as private international law, Story demolished theidea that the jus gentium could provide transnational, substantive rules of law.204 Of course, natural law and jus gentium did not cease to exist in legal thought.205 Hall was a naturalist after all. Still, one may think that a professed positivist like Oppenheim206 would feel obliged to cling to a jus gentium doctrine even if it brought about the need to operate with unwieldy legal fictions. Later writers would take even windier argumentative routes to reconcile the principle of fault with the desired result of objective responsibility for all acts of agents. Hatschek, for instance, conjures a culpa in eligendo to expand the ambit of responsibility: Even where agents act ultra vires, the state is at fault when it is careless enough to choose as organs those who would injure foreign states or nationals.207 Oppenheim’s German contemporary, Heinrich Triepel, was the first to clearly break with Grotius.208 Triepel was a positivist.209 Though he showed some interest in borrowing from Roman law concepts,210 he resisted doctrines of the jus gentium such as the notion that there exist international crimes based on natural law.211 Triepel restated pre-existing legal doctrine in so far as he contends that the state is responsible where it fails to exercise due diligence.212 However, he broke new ground with respect to attribution by way of agency. To him the state was responsible for all actions of organs it vested with public tasks, regardless of whether they acted intra or ultra vires. 213 Rather than tackling the traditional doctrine, Triepel conceded that “juristically” ultra vires acts are not acts of state. He defended this position simply by pointing to state practiceand the practical need for security in international relations.214 Substantively, Anzillotti—also a staunch positivist—took the same position as Triepel, but he addressed the doctrinal problems with greater care and vigour. It is his work that forms the spine of the reports his compatriot, Roberto Ago, eventually submitted to the ILC.215 According to Anzillotti, the state is responsible solely because it has acted contrary to objective law.216 He rejects the requirement of fault, which the Italian jurist correctly identified as being rooted in the jus gentium. 217 The abstract entity of the state cannot formulate a will and thus it could only incur fault through its officials.218 Thereby, the weakness of the legal fictions of culpa in eligendo and culpa in vigilando become obvious. The highest functionaries of government are not nominated to their positions by other officials, nor are they subject to control by other officials.219 Moreover, Anzillotti points out that generalized systems of recruiting public officials render the idea that there was fault in recruiting the official an awkward legal fiction.220 Anzillotti reasoned that the state is responsible for all acts of its agents, because it had issued a legal guarantee that other states would not be injured by acts emanating from its sphere of activity.221 This guarantee applies regardless of whether the agent’s acts exceed his powers, as long as he acts in his official role. Not only does this save third states from the arduous task of ascertaining which acts were intra vires and which were not;international law also avoids prescribing how a state is to set up its internal system and control its agents.222 Following Anzillotti’s seminal work, only one currently advocated doctrine developed: the idea that the state is responsible for actions of successful revolutionary movements.223 It has been pointed out that this doctrine is at odds with general concepts of state responsibility.224 Accordingly, the revelation that this doctrine is not grounded in the writings of distinguished publicists but was developed by the case law of arbitral tribunals and diplomatic practice comes as no surprise. It remains to be seen whether, in the context of Western colonialism and economic imperialism, the doctrine reached its peak during this period. The law of state responsibility was extended because Western governments vigorously asserted diplomatic protection, backed up by military power, for transnational business operations penetrating Asia, Africa, and Latin America at the time.225 Hall and Oppenheim both consider state responsibility in the face of activity by revolutionary movements, but neither holds states governed by successful revolutionaries responsible for the revolutionary movement’s prior acts. According to Hall, a state is not responsible for injuries foreign nationals incur from rioters, mobs, or revolutionary movements.226 In these situations, foreigners enter the state at their own risk because a government cannot control such actors. Responsibility only ensues if “it can be shown that a state is not reasonably well ordered.”227 Moreover, Hall argues, citizens are not indemnified for injuries suffered from civil commotions and the state is not bound to do more for foreigners than for its subjects.228 He does not distinguish between successful and failed revolutionary movements. Oppenheim takes the same position (though he adds that a state has the duty to punish the rioters and must compel them to pay damages, where possible).229 In 1900, the Institute of International Law proposed to extend the law by way of treaty.230 A state was supposed to assume responsibility for injuries incurred during a riot, an insurrection, or a civil war if these acts were specifically directed against foreigners or were a breach of the laws of war.231 However, the injured state was barred from holding the state responsible for acts of insurrectionary movements as long as it recognized the latter as a belligerent.232 The proposed rules did not hold the state responsible for acts of successful revolutionary movements.233 Instead, this principle was mentioned in some official exchanges at the end of the 19th century.234 It was authoritatively developed by a series of arbitrations, which involved European and U.S. nationals who had incurred losses during the Venezuelan revolutions of the 1890s. The French Company of Venezuelan Railroads Case, 235 which the French-Venezuelan Claims Commission decided in 1905, concerned inter alia losses the Company incurred when revolutionary activity hampered its railroad construction activity.236 The umpire held that the respondent was responsible for the acts of a revolutionary movement since the revolution was successful without giving reasons or citing authority for his opinion.237 Two years earlier, the American-Venezuelan Commission confirmed the “well-established rule of international law” arguing that the revolutionaries’ acts “are to be regarded as the acts of a de factogovernment.”238 A third case, decided a year later, referred as authority only to a judgement of the U.S. Supreme Court (Williams v. Bruffy), which held that governmental acts of a successful revolutionary movements are valid.239 Subsequently, the principle was taken up by arbitral tribunals and publicists240 and has crystallized into a rule of positive law.