The 'duty to repair' in practice: the hundred years history of a legal concept

International norms – both social and legal – are usually the by-product of historical ruptures during which new generations of norms entrepreneurs benefit from windows of opportunities to force global structural changes. For instance, it is widely noticed that the two world wars in the twentieth century have led to massive global normative changes in financial regulation. One can only cite the sudden rise of states' recognition of a duty to provide for the social security of their citizens – a move that is often associated with the rise of Keynesianism (Hall 1989) – or a duty to repair war-led destructions. Most often, in the last century, the addition of new duties on the side of states has been framed in the language of hard-gained rights by citizens who suffered catastrophic destruction from the Great War to the end of the Cold War. By focusing on the emergence and evolution of such a new norm as the state's duty to repair, we wish to trace the origins of major shifts in international norms and citizens' rights throughout the twentieth century...