Jurisdiction and Admissibility

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The Court That Built the Advisory Opinion It Refused to Complete: OC-30/25 on Arms Trafficking, Corporate Immunity, and the Reach of Advisory Jurisdiction

March 26, 2026

Mexico’s effort to hold the gun industry to account has now encountered an institutional setback in San José. Its request for an advisory opinion raised six questions before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). This post examines, against a more expansive account of OC-30/25 offered here, whether laws granting public or private arms-industry companies procedural immunity against victims’ claims are compatible with Articles 8 and 25 of the American Convention on Human Rights. In its 2025 advisory opinion on illicit firearms trafficking, publicly notified on 5 March 2026, the Court addresses the broader human rights implications of such trafficking, but does not answer that question directly. That omission is central to the opinion. It leaves unresolved whether victims can access a court and obtain a remedy when domestic law bars claims against companies related to the arms industry from the outset. The opinion develops much of the normative framework needed to answer that question, yet stops short of doing so.

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Central Bank Sanctions Return to the CJEU

March 20, 2026

A Primer on the Russian Central Bank’s Legal Challenge to the Permanent Freezing of its Assets On March 3, 2026, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) announced that it has recently filed an action for annulment under Article 263 TFEU challenging Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2600 before the General Court of the EU. This regulation…

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Essential Security Interests Exceptions and the Limits of Self-Judgment: Implications of Riverside Coffee v Nicaragua

March 19, 2026

In recent years, national security has increasingly served as a justification to deviate from international law obligations. The ICSID award in Riverside Coffee v Nicaragua has added a new layer to the developing case law on the interplay between essential security interests exceptions and the notion of self-judgment in the context of investment arbitration. …

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Domestic Justice First? Reassessing Complementarity in the ICC-SCC Relationship

January 13, 2026

“It has stopped raining! Now, come outside, Muslims, we are going to play.” These are the words the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court alleges were chanted by Edmond Beina and his men in Guen, a village in Mambere-Kadei Prefecture of the Central African Republic (CAR) between February and April 2014 (see para…

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Guatemala’s Application to Intervene in the Sapodilla Cayes Case: An Impermissible Intervention by an Indispensable Party?

December 22, 2025

The International Court of Justice recently heard oral arguments by Guatemala, Belize and Honduras on Guatemala’s application to intervene under Article 62 of the Statute in the case concerning Sovereignty over the Sapodilla Cayes (Belize v Honduras). Guatemala’s prima facie grounds for intervention are straightforward: it is one of the three parties (in addition to Belize and…

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