Servitudes

The concept of servitudes was utilized by some writers on international law to qualify a regime of restrictions, established by treaty or local custom, applicable to the territory of one State in the interest of the territory of one or more other States. The main character of such regime was identified with the permanent attachment to the territory of the State, so as to be opposable to third States and transmissible in case of a change in sovereignty. From this flowed the analogy with the civil law institute of servitudes: the servient State to which are imposed localized obligations; the dominant State entitled to exercise the corresponding right within the limits provided by the act establishing the servitude.However, the majority of legal writers always doubted that this analogy was adequate, because of the heterogeneousness of the situations evocated, lacking a clear common ground. The only common element was that servitudes, as minor rights in rem, did not imply a transfer of territorial sovereignty but only a limitation of it. The author advocates that international servitudes made their time, the idea of the existence of regimes running with the land still survives in relation to the so-called dispositive treaties, creating territorial objective regimes opposable to third States and automatically transmissible in case of succession. The question is whether there is presently any place for the doctrine of servitudes in international law. The answer has to be negative, not only because the term international servitude is legally incorrect and politically unacceptable, but also because the more recent version of ancient servitudes, the objective territorial regimes created by dispositive treaties, equally face the same uncertainty about their legal standing in international law.