Introduction

The "clean hands" doctrine has been defined as "an important principle of international law that ha[s] to be taken into account whenever there [i]s evidence that an applicant State ha[s] not acted in good faith and that it ha[s] come to court with unclean hands." It originated from the general principle of good faith. The application of the "clean hands" doctrine in international law is still controversial. In the context of state responsibility, the ILC Special Rapporteur James Crawford explained that "if it exist[s] at all," the doctrine would operate as a ground of inadmissibility ...