January 31, 2023

Giulio Fedele

On the 17th of January 2023, the European Court of Human Rights issued its long-awaited Grand Chamber judgment in the case of Fedotova v. Russia (nos. 40792/10, etc). Although the Court has dealt numerous times with the rights of same-sex couples, this was the first…

January 26, 2023

Marko Milanovic

In the first part of this post I talked about the (many) good things about the European Court’s admissibility decision in Ukraine and the Netherlands v Russia. In particular, the conclusion that Russia controlled the separatist areas of Eastern Ukraine from 2014 up…

January 26, 2023

Marko Milanovic

Yesterday the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered its much-anticipated decision on jurisdiction and admissibility in the interstate case of Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia (nos 8019/16, 43800/14 and 28525/20 – decision; press release). The Court declared…

January 30, 2023

Yael Ronen

The Request for Advisory Opinion On 30 December 2022 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution A/RES/77/247, containing the annual indictment of Israeli practices in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. In addition, the resolution contains one novelty, a request addressed to…

December 20, 2022

Susan Power

On 10 November 2022, at the Seventy-seventh session of the UN General Assembly, Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee), the State of Palestine- in a move which skirted largely under the media radar- tabled a resolution under Item 47 calling for an International Court of Justice (ICJ)…

December 16, 2022

Andreas Zimmermann

As of today, membership in the United Nations, and with it the status as a contracting party of the Statute of the ICJ as per Art. 93 (1) UN Charter, is, unlike in the first decades of the existence of the organization, almost universal. Yet, there continue to…

January 20, 2023

Kushtrim Istrefi

In September 2020, the General Court of the European Union (GCEU) examined whether the 2019 admission of Kosovo as a ‘third country’ to the EU Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) amounted to recognition by the EU of Kosovo as an independent State.

October 27, 2021

Philippa Webb

There have been a flurry of cases in the English courts concerning foreign leaders in recent months. Permission has been granted to serve the President of Mozambique in a case involving claims challenging state guarantees of the financing for projects in Mozambique. The Fifth President of Ukraine…

June 4, 2021

Monika Zalnieriute

Recent Grand Chamber judgments in Big Brother Watch and Others v. United Kingdom and Centrum för Rättvisa v. Sweden held that some aspects of the UK’s and Sweden’s domestic surveillance regimes violated Articles 8 and 10 of the European…

January 19, 2023

Toni Marzal

Last August, an ICSID tribunal handed down its much-anticipated ECT-based award in the dispute between Rockhopper, a British oil and gas company, and the Italian Republic. Rockhopper had been denied a licence to exploit an offshore oilfield, due to legislation banning oil production concessions within a certain distance…

December 19, 2022

Daniel Bodansky

A major question coming out of the 2015 Paris conference was whether the Paris Agreement represented a meeting of the minds and would provide a stable framework for international cooperation on climate change going forward, or whether it papered over differences and left crucial issues unresolved.  For twenty-five…

December 16, 2022

Brian McGarry Francis Chávez Aco

On the sidelines of last year’s COP26, Antigua and Barbuda and Tuvalu concluded the Agreement for the Establishment of the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (‘the Agreement’ establishing ‘the Commission’). The Agreement is open to signature by all 39 members of…

January 13, 2023

Fiona Abken Paulina Rob

In the wake of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, the so far often neglected crime of aggression is receiving increased attention. While this attention is currently centred primarily on the establishment of a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, there is also growing support for…

January 9, 2023

Mariam Bezhanishvili

The conclusion of the investigation phase in the Situation in Georgia by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has once again brought into the spotlight the often overlooked conflict between Georgia and Russia that took place in August 2008 over the occupied territory of…

January 5, 2023

John Cubbon

On 15 December 2022 the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) upheld the conviction and sentence of Dominic Ongwen. Mitigation of Ongwen’s sentence because of his past as a child soldier was not the subject of any of the grounds…