This advanced seminar examines the legal, institutional, and diplomatic mechanisms available when diplomatic immunity is abused. While diplomatic immunity is essential to international relations, it can create accountability gaps when diplomats commit serious wrongdoing. This course investigates the tension between immunity and justice, focusing on what legal recourse exists — or fails to exist — for victims, host states, and the international community.
Students analyze the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, state responsibility doctrine, waiver practice, persona non grata expulsions, civil litigation strategies, compensation regimes, international arbitration, and emerging reform proposals. Through comparative case studies, the course evaluates how domestic courts, international tribunals, and diplomatic negotiations attempt to resolve abuses without collapsing the reciprocity that sustains diplomacy.
The seminar emphasizes doctrinal precision, institutional realism, and normative critique. Students explore whether current remedies are sufficient, whether reform is possible, and how international law balances diplomatic stability with demands for accountability.
This course assumes prior study of public international law.
Course Objectives
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
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Identify legal gaps created by diplomatic immunity.
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Evaluate available remedies for victims of diplomatic abuse.
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Interpret Vienna Convention accountability mechanisms.
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Analyze waiver and recall practices.
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Assess the role of state responsibility and reparations.
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Compare judicial and diplomatic enforcement strategies.
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Evaluate human rights challenges to immunity.
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Understand political limits of legal recourse.
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Critically examine reform proposals.
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Develop sophisticated arguments about accountability.
