Forthcoming in the Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law (27) Even though the Institut does not enjoy the same level of ‘institutional legitimacy’ as the Commission,41 it provides an important forum for scholarly discussions within the international legal discipline. Its works have also contributed to the codification and progressive development of international law in their own way. Hence, the Bath resolution not only illustrates how the proper scope of asylum remained contested even among the jurists of the time, but also provides a counterfactual account of what the work of the ILC on the topic could look like.42 C. The ILC and the 1967 Declaration on Territorial Asylum Although initially retaining the right of asylum as a subject ripe for codification, the ILC ended up prioritizing topics that, at that time, were considered of more relevance, including the law of treaties and the law of diplomatic and consular relations. It was only in 1959 that the codification of the law of asylum would reemerge in the debates at the Sixth Committee. After a proposal submitted by El Salvador 43 – which was promptly supported by various Latin American countries44 – the UNGA adopted Resolution 1400 (XIV) requesting the Commission to ‘undertake the codification of the principles and rules of international law relating to the right of asylum’.45 The same was done a couple of years later, when the UNGA called once again on the ILC to undertake the codification of the law of asylum. Although the Commission eventually included the topic in its future programme of work, it never in fact conducted any See D. Tladi, ‘The International Law Commission, the Institut, and States’ (2023) 117 AJIL Unbound 231-235. The work of the Institut would be expressly mentioned by the Italian delegate at the Sixth Committee’s 604 th meeting as ‘the most important statement of present-day theory’ on the right of asylum. See UNGA, ‘Summary Record of the 604th Meeting: 6th Committee, held at Headquarters’ (30 September 1959) UN Doc. A/C.6/SR.604, at 17. 43 UNGA, ‘El Salvador: Proyecto de Resolución’ (28 September 1959) UN Doc. A/C.6/L.443. 44 For instance, while Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela supported El Salvador’s proposal, even if with some reservations, the delegations of Mexico and Dominican Republic opposed the codification of the right of asylum as it was ‘too controversial to be the subject of general codification’. See UNGA, ‘Summary Record of the 604th Meeting: 6th Committee’ (30 September 1959) UN Doc. A/C.6/SR.604, at 17–18. 45 UNGA Res. 1400 (XIV), ‘Codification of the Principles and Rules of International Law Relating to the Right of Asylum’ (21 November 1959). 41 42 11 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4816199