Letter to the Journal Today as Yesterday? Unilateral Coercive Measures and Human Dignity

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to use the question of unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) as a vantage point to explore what it tells us about the degree of transformation of international law from a horizontal to a mixed “horizontal-vertical” legal order. We show that such transformation is manifested not by the mere existence of limits to horizontal reactions but by the values from which such limits increasingly arise (above all human dignity) and the legal mechanisms through which they find expression. When considered together, these values and mechanisms instil a significant degree of verticality in the international legal order.