Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2025
This chapter critically examines how international lawyers have conceptualized the structural relationship between organizations and their members. First, it argues that popular accounts behind the notion that international organizations enjoy a personality that is opposable to non-members rest on problematic, and ultimately unproven, assumption. Next, the chapter explores the idea of volonté distincte. This is the notion that international organizations must exhibit a will of their own before they can be thought of as distinct from their members. The chapter zeroes in on the discipline’s most commonly employed test in this respect, namely checking the capacity of an organization to adopt decisions without the consent of all of its members. It argues that, on closer inspection, this test turns out to be incoherent and cannot serve the purpose it was devised for.
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