State Immunity

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Unilateral Economic Sanctions to Deter and Punish Cyber-Attacks: Are They Here to Stay?

December 7, 2021

Iryna Bogdanova

María Vásquez Callo-Müller

In June 2021 during the Biden-Putin summit, President Biden stated that critical infrastructure should be “off-limits” to cyber-attacks and handed over a list of 16 areas of critical infrastructure that under no circumstance should be targeted by cyber-attacks. This took place after the SolarWinds cyber-attack that was described by SolarWinds Vice-President as “your worst nightmare”. The attack was followed by tough US unilateral sanctions – precisely, sovereign debt sanctions against Russia and sanctions targeting six Russian technology firms for their support of the Russian Intelligence Services’ cyber program. This attack as well as many others (e.g., NotPetya or WannaCry) illustrate the current problem in international law: a lack of binding norms regulating conduct in cyberspace. As a result, states are left with only a few options of how to respond and prevent cyber-enabled malicious conduct. Among the available alternatives, unilateral cyber sanctions are gaining momentum. The relevant sanctions frameworks have already been introduced by the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. On 2 December 2021, the…

The Immunity Saga Reaches Latin America. The Changri-la Case

December 2, 2021

Lucas Carlos Lima

Aziz Tuffi Saliba

In September 2021, a new episode in the saga of jurisdictional immunities of States unfolded. The Brazilian Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal, STF) ruled that immunity from jurisdiction ceases when faced with unlawful acts connected to human rights violations (decision in Brazilian Portuguese here). The case concerns the Changri-La fishing boat, sunk in 1943 by a…

Editorial: Germany v Italy: Jurisdictional Immunities – Redux (and Redux and Redux)

October 18, 2021

Joseph Weiler

Will we ever see closure to this saga at the center of which one finds the somewhat controversial decision of the ICJ of 2012 and the very controversial decision of the Italian Constitutional Court of 2014 rebuffing that decision? There is no need to recap fully the endless ‘puntatas’ in this story which have been followed…

EJIL: The Podcast! Episode 12 – “No Licence to Kill”

October 18, 2021

Dapo Akande

In this episode, Marko Milanovic, Philippa Webb and I discuss the legal issues that arise from targeted killings conducted by states outside their territory. We begin with a discussion of the recent blockbuster judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case concerning Alexander Litvinenko (Carter v. Russia, no. 20914/07, 21 September 2021). In that…

‘Yet, it moves…’: The Dynamic Evolution of State immunity in the ‘Comfort Women’ case

April 7, 2021

Dr. Eleonora Branca

Introduction On 8 January 2021, the Central District Court of Seoul, Republic of Korea (South Korea), ordered the Japanese government to compensate 12 South Korean victims in respect of sexual slavery perpetrated by members of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Japanese occupation of parts of Asia until the end of WWII (case n.

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ICC Appeals Chamber Holds that Heads of State Have No Immunity Under Customary International Law Before International Tribunals

May 6, 2019

Dapo Akande

The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has, this morning, issued what seems to be an extremely controversial decision on Head of State Immunity. At the time of writing, the full written judgment is not yet available in the appeal by Jordan against the decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber referring that state to the UN Security…

The ‘Security Council Route’ to the Derogation from Personal Head of State Immunity in the Al-Bashir Case: How Explicit must Security Council Resolutions be?

September 19, 2018

Talita de Souza Dias

Last week, the Appeals Court of the International Criminal Court (ICC, the Court) held hearings in relation to Jordan’s Appeal from a decision of Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) II holding that it has failed to cooperate with the Court in the arrest and surrender of Sudan’s President, Omar Al-Bashir. As is well known, Al-Bashir is presently…

Let the Games Continue: Immunity for War Crimes before the Italian Constitutional Court

October 24, 2014

Christian Tams

The issue is important, no doubt – to what extent do rules of immunity apply in respect of grave violations of international law? Over the past two decades, it has been addressed by lawmakers, the ILC, international and national courts in cases like Al Adsani, Jones, Bouzari and others – and of course in hundreds of articles, notes…

Is there a place for sovereign immunity in the fight against terrorism? The US Supreme Court says ‘no’ in Bank Markazi v. Peterson

May 19, 2016

Victor Grandaubert

The US Supreme Court’s judgment of 20 April 2016 in the case of Bank Markazi, aka The Central Bank of Iran, Petitioner v. Deborah Peterson, et al. highlights the increasingly isolated nature of US practice on sovereign immunity. As well as addressing issues of constitutional law, the judgment is also significant from an international law perspective; the…