Illegal Annexation and State Continuity: The Case of the Incorporation of the Baltic States by the USSR

Illegal Annexation and State Continuity: The Case of the Incorporation of the Baltic States by the USSR. By Lauri Mälksoo. Leiden, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2003. Pp. xxxiv, 382. Index. $190, euro133.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union led to a profound political transformation in Central and Eastern Europe during the 1990s. The transformation raised numerous legal issues relating to state extinction, state continuity, and state succession. Illegal Annexation and State Continuity: The case of the Incorporation of the Baltic States by the USSR, by Lauri Mälksoo, undertakes a comprehensive analysis of one of the key aspects of the transformation: the preservation of the continuity of the international legal personalities of the Baltic states despite fifty years of Soviet annexation and occupation.

Mälksoo, a native Estonian who currently holds a lectureship in international and European Community Law at the University of Tartu, seeks to determine why and how the Baltic states were able to preserve their international legal personalities as states, and how relevant state practice associated with the case of the Baltic states has modified or evolved international law. Throughout his analysis, Mälksoo pays particular attention to the interplay between political factors and the development and application of international law. This relationship is particularly important in the case of the Baltic states, given the sparse legal precedent for maintaining state continuity during a fifty-year occupation.

The book, which Mälksoo originally defended as doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Law of the Humbolt University Berlin, is divided into three parts: part I (Ex Injuria Ius Non Oritur-illegal acts do not create law); part II (Ex Factis Oritur Ius-facts have a tendency to become law); and part III (Between Normativity and Power). Part I undertakes a detailed examination of both the international maxim that illegal acts do not create law and the legal arguments upon which the Baltic states relied to assert that their occupation and annexation were in fact illegal. Mälksoo sets up this analysis by undertaking a discussion of the conceptual ramifications of the traditional legal debate between state continuity and state absorption. He explores the changing status of statehood in contemporary international law and asks how the state continuity of illegally annexed states should be assessed in light of the changes and uncertainties surrounding...