Study Of The Head Of State Exemption Laws

Head-of-State Immunity is one of the most ancient topics of International Law. And it is widely recognized to have close relationship with the concept of the Diplomatic Immunity and the Sovereign State Immunity with regard to their evolving history. However, with the later ones consistent development and the clarification of their scope, Head-of-State Immunity has become even vaguer. It is not clearly codified either in international or domestic law. And for a long time, it is recognized as one of the International Custom Law. While in practice, Head-of-State Immunity is always incorporated with the other two immunities.Even so, Head-of-State in the nature is different from diplomats. And with the evolving trend of restrictive immunity for sovereign states, the traditional understanding of Head-of-State is at risk. The newly developed International Criminal Law has already established the principle of"irrelevance of official position"which emphasizes that the official position of a head-of-state is no longer the excuse for not being sued in international courts. Moreover, recent years have seen many cases suing sitting or former Head-of-State before foreign domestic courts. All these remind us of a careful study on this topic.In this article, it would first deal with the relations among the three concepts of immunities, to make clear that Head-of-State Immunity has its own distinction, and needs to be seen to separately. Afterwards, the article would look into international and domestic legislation to find clues about Head-of-State Immunity testifying it to be one of the international custom law. Third part of the article deals with two important cases either in domestic foreign court and ICJ, the International Court of Justice, to find out what the judges and courts hold and further, what opinions the states have in this newly developed topic. Finally, I will conclude with the practice and attitude of our country, to give proper suggestions for our country to face the new trend of Head-of-State Immunity.