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Public International Law and Human Rights
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
BLS LLB 5 Years · Sem 9
Nov 2010 Examination
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BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 9 Public International Law and Human Rights Nov 2010 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 28 September 2026.
This edition revised 29 September 2026.
Published by munotes.in, Mumbai.
Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the Nov 2010 examination.
The answers in this volume state the law as it stands today, not as it stood when the paper was set, and in this subject three changes matter. The Protection of Human Rights (Amendment) Act, 2019 allows a Judge of the Supreme Court, and not only a former Chief Justice of India, to chair the National Human Rights Commission, and cut the term from five years to three. The Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure were replaced on 1 July 2024 by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, so sedition is now section 152 with its own saving for criticism of the government, and the provisions on arrest, rape and legal aid carry new numbers. And on 21 March 2024 the Supreme Court recognised a right against the adverse effects of climate change under Articles 14 and 21. Where a question turns on a provision since replaced, the answer gives it as it then stood and the present position, and says which is which.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the Nov 2010 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the Nov 2010 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 25 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
1.
Q.1: Write short answers, not more than two sentences, 2 marks each
20 Marks
(a)What do you mean by 'Fictional Theory'?[2]
Answer
The idea. The fictional theory, also called the theory of exterritoriality or the fiction of extraterritoriality, explains certain immunities in international law by pretending that a place or a person is outside the territory of the State where it physically is, and inside the territory of the State it belongs to. The law then applies as if the fiction were true.
Where it was used, and it has two classic applications.
Diplomatic agents and mission premises. Grotius and Bynkershoek explained the immunity of an ambassador by the fiction that he never leaves the territory of the sending State, so the receiving State's laws never reach him, and that the embassy building is a piece of the sending State's soil. The fiction is no longer accepted as the basis of the immunity. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961, rests it instead on functional necessity, stated in its Preamble: the purpose of the privileges and immunities is not to benefit individuals but to ensure the efficient performance of the functions of diplomatic missions. Mission premises remain the territory of the receiving State; they are inviolable under Article 22, which is a different thing.
Ships on the high seas. The related floating island theory treats a ship as a floating portion of the territory of the State whose flag she flies, which was used to explain why the flag State's law follows the ship. Here too the fiction is now replaced by a rule: Article 92 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982, provides that a ship on the high seas is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the flag State, without any pretence that she is territory.
Why it still matters. The fiction survives in the reasoning of older cases and is still quoted. In The Case of the S.S. Lotus (France v. Turkey), P.C.I.J., Series A, No. 10 (1927), the Permanent Court relied on the assimilation of a vessel to the territory of her flag State in holding that Turkey could try the French officer, and in Chung Chi Cheung v. The King, [1939] A.C. 160, the Privy Council said plainly that the notion of exterritoriality is a fiction that should not be pressed, and that jurisdiction rests on consent and not on a pretended absence from the territory.
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