Recent Scholarship & Treaties: Examining and Understanding "Treaty Exit"

Laurence Helfer, Exiting Treaties, 91 Va. L. Rev. 1579 (2005) (full text, pdf)

In the latest issue of the Virginia Law Review, Professor Helfer presents an analysis of "treaty exit," specifically, the unilateral exit by States from international conventions and organizations. The analysis includes six "distinguishing characteristics" of treaty exit and empirical evidence of treaty exit since 1945. After concluding the topic of treaty exit has been largely ignored by legal scholars and international relations theorists, Helfer presents a framework to "rethink" treaty exit from both an international law and international relations perspective. Based on this framework, Helfer provides a "blueprint for future research" for the "under-explored phenomenon of treaty exit."