Discussions Regarding the Invalidity of States’ Consent in the Field of Public International Law

This article aims at a comparative analysis of the invalidity of states’ consent and examines the manner in which they are regulated in the Public International Law and in the domestic law. Thus, according to the dispositions of the Vienna Convention (1969) on the law of treaties between states, invalidity of states’ consent are: breach of the dispositions of the domestic law of the state regarding the competence to sign treaties; the error; the fraud; the corruption of a state representative; the coercion of a state representative; the coercion against a state. The invalidity of states’ consent are sanctioned both in the matter of the Public International Law as well as in the domestic civil law by nullity, either absolute (such as the coercion exercised on the state representative and the coercion against a state) or relative (such as the breach of the dispositions of the domestic law of the state regarding the competence to sign treaties, the error, the fraud or the corruption of a state representative). In certain cases, the dispositions of the domestic law are fully mirrored by the regulations of the Vienna Convention, as is the case of the fraud, but there are also cases – the breach of the dispositions of the domestic law of the state regarding the competence to sign treaties – where the Vienna Convention introduces a disposition which flagrantly contradicts the civil theory in the matter, the state being able to invoke itself the defect in its consent. At the same time, in the domestic civil law, the rule according to which no one can invoke his/her own turpitude is widely sanctioned. We conclude by showing that the manner of regulation of nullity taken over from the domestic civil law and transposed in the dispositions of the Vienna Convention fails to meet the exigencies and rigors of the definition of nullity.