Legittima difesa. Dal caso Caroline alla Conferenza di Kampala

What to do if a State violates a rule of law, conventional or covenantal? How is it possible for the injured State, to assert its right? What happens if a violation of a law by a State is liable to put at stake the survival of another State? A concept of self-defense in international law that has undergone changes and new interpretations, sometimes restrictive or expansive, according a practice that has been defined over the last three centuries. The dispute is renewed after the Nine Eleven, manifesting a threat significantly different from those faced during the Cold War. A series of questions which could be resolved through the legal and historical reconstruction of the concept, starting from the sinking of the vessel Caroline until the Kampala conference on the revision of the Statute of the International Criminal Court.