International legal personalitysubjectivity of cities

This chapter calls into question the denial of cities’ status in international law by pointing to their growing importance as central actors on the international legal plane, as well as by challenging the necessity and desirability of the current near-exclusive linkage between international legal status and statehood. These changes, albeit gradual and incremental, might be the seeds of a future, formal recognition of the status of cities in international law. This is so because, theoretically, any entity given rights and obligations under international law can be given international legal personality. Thus, this chapter also examines the theoretical possibility of acknowledging cities’ international personhood/subjectivity - how it would come about, and what it might mean for the very concept of international legal personality/subjectivity.