Economic and financial sanctions in international law:nature, sources, and reviewability

The chapter clarifies the special meaning of the term ‘sanction’ in international relations and law and provides a brief account of international sanctions’ emergence and evolution. Since the turn of the 21st century, the tendency is to move away from broad and indiscriminately applied economic sanctions and towards targeted sanctions, often of financial nature, aimed at specific individuals and organizations – although the very wide-ranging sanctions recently imposed on Russia and Belarus in response to the invasion of Ukraine may indicate a reversal of this trend. The overview of the evolving substantive content of sanctions regimes is followed by an examination of their varying legal sources, with a clear distinction being drawn between UN-mandated sanctions regimes and those imposed autonomously and unilaterally by certain states (or regional organizations). This leads to the identification, in very general terms, of potential legal grounds and procedural possibilities for challenging the legality of decisions imposing sanctions before international and/or national courts.