Crippling Jurisdiction

A Matter of International Law in an Unpredict-able International Reality

Περίληψη

The modern international landscape is facing a multifaceted crisis. The recent wave of revisionism in international relations has raised the question of whether international law, as it currently stands, can respond to it. This paper examines one specific manifestation of said crisis. The phenomenon which the paper terms “crippling jurisdiction”is a situation in which a state retains legal title over its territory, though it cannot exercise the sum of its powers within that territory in an efficient and sovereign manner. Despite the legal title remaining intact, the practical capacity to govern is degraded through means that fall short of an unambiguous armed attack, leaving affected states with formal authority, yet limited recourse. Drawing on recent state practice, including the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory, the sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea and Turkey’s “Mavi Vatan” initiative, this paper argues that the existing normative framework, built around thresholds calibrated to armed attack and formal occupation, is structurally unable to address this gap between legal title and practical capacity.