On January 27, 2014, the International Court of Justice (Court) rendered its judgment in a dispute between Peru and Chile concerning the maritime boundary between them. The Court held that a partial maritime boundary already existed between the parties, and it proceeded to analyze both its nature and its extent on the basis of agreements between the parties, their practice, and other evidence. For the remainder of the boundary extending up to 200 nautical miles, the Court applied the rule of equitable delimitation found in Article 74 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Comparative international law promises to bring fresh attention to the similarities and differences in how international law is understood and approached at the domestic level. Comparative international human rights law applies this focus to similarities and differences in the ways that international human rights law is, for example, interpreted at the domestic level by courts.

On April 2, 2015, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS or Tribunal) rendered an advisory opinion on the rights and obligations of flag states and coastal states regarding illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing within the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). ITLOS confirmed that the full Tribunal—not just its Seabed Disputes Chamber—has jurisdiction to render advisory opinions, a matter of controversy that had previously been untested. The Tribunal also held that under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS or Convention), flag states have a “due diligence” obligation to ensure that vessels flying their flag do not engage in IUU fishing activities, and that the flag state may be held liable if that obligation of due diligence is breached. In addition, the Tribunal clarified that where fisheries competence has been transferred from a state to an international organization, it is the organization, not the flag state, that may face liability for a failure to have taken adequate measures to prevent IUU fishing. Finally, the Tribunal confirmed that coastal states have a duty to consult and cooperate with each other in the sustainable management of shared stocks and highly migratory species.

On July 7, 2014, an ad hoc arbitral tribunal (Tribunal) rendered its award on the dispute between Bangladesh and India concerning the delimitation of their entire maritime boundary in the northern part of the Bay of Bengal. The award established the course of the boundary line in the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and the continental shelf within and beyond 200 nautical miles, ending a dispute that had persisted between the neighbors for more than three decades.

On April 3, 2015, the ICSID tribunal in Venoklim Holding B. V. v. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela issued the first public decision to consider the effect of a state’s denunciation of the ICSID Convention (Convention). The tribunal decided that Venezuela’s denunciation on January 24, 2012, did not preclude jurisdiction over a claim submitted in the period after notification of the denunciation but before its effective date. Yet the tribunal also held that Venezuela’s domestic statute was insufficient as an autonomous offer of consent to ICSID arbitration, and that the conjunction of the statute with an investment treaty did not confer such consent where the conditions in the statute were not fulfilled. The award was notable too because of the majority’s holding that the tribunal lacked jurisdiction owing to the Venezuelan nationality of the underlying beneficial owners of the Dutch corporation that was the claimant in the ICSID arbitration. The Tribunal held that, because the claimant was effectively owned by Venezuelan nationals, the requirement of foreign ownership or control was not satisfied for the purposes of the applicable Venezuelan investment statute and the ICSID Convention.

Historical practice, or custom, has long been seen as a source of authority in the resolution of separation-of-powers disputes. In two recent cases assessing the limits to the president’s power regarding the recognition of foreign nations and the making of recess appointments, the Supreme Court heavily emphasized past practice. Historical practice, the Court said, reflects “the compromises and working arrangementsth at the elected branches of Government themselves have reached.” in the realm of war powers, the executive branch has long relied on custom to justify military initiatives that were carried out without congressional approval. In essence, the executive has argued that because force has been used in the past without congressional approval, the same is permissible in various other situations (for example, in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Kosovo, and Panama).

On May 22, 2014, the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body (AB) issued its report on the controversial “ECSeal Products” dispute, finding that a European Union (EU or Union) prohibition on the importation and sale of seal products violated the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (GATT). It did so, however, in a way that largely upheld the Union”s defense on animal welfare grounds, so that the prohibition remains effective. The decision marks the first time that the Appellate Body has found that a trade ban on animal welfare grounds falls within the exception under GATT Article XX(a) for measures necessary to protect public morals. This determination implicates the legality of future trade restrictions on animal welfare grounds, as well as restrictions imposed on human rights grounds, such as labor rights.

On July 18, 2014, the Arbitral Tribunal (Tribunal) constituted in accordance with Article 26 of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) and the 1976 UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitration issued its long-awaited final awards in the famous arbitral proceeding related to the demise of oil giant Yukos. The Tribunal held unanimously that a coordinated set of actions by the Russian government (including arrests, tax reassessments, fines, and the forced sale of Yukos) amounted to an indirect expropriation of Yukosin breach of Russia’s obligations under the ECT, and that Russia was liable to pay prompt, adequate, and effective compensation for that breach. The Tribunal concluded that Yukos’s claims were not barred by the company’s own illegal acts or because of the “carve-out” for taxation measures under Article 21 of the ECT. Instead, the Tribunal concluded that the claimants had contributed to the prejudice they suffered and it therefore reduced the awards and reimbursement for legal costs by 25 percent. Even accounting for this reduction, the composite final award is still, by far, the largest known arbitral award ever rendered. The Tribunal ordered the Russian Federation to pay damages totaling US$50,020,867,798, in addition to arbitral and legal costs. Post-award interest is due on any outstanding amounts of damages and costs not paid starting from January 15, 2015, and is to be compounded annually thereafter.

The Dominican Republic (DR) filed its declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Inter-American Court or Court) on March 22, 1999, and since then has been the subject of four judgments and a series of provisional measures. On November 4, 2014, however, the Constitutional Tribunal of the Dominican Republic (Tribunal) declared unconstitutional the government’s declaration accepting jurisdiction, implying that the Dominican Republic is not now, and perhaps never has been, under the Inter-American Court’s jurisdiction.

In their eagerness to justify the “United States perspective” on the Kampala definition of the crime of aggression and on the International Criminal Court (ICC), Koh and Buchwald tend to invent imaginary enemies and to ascribe to them views that they do not actually hold. In so doing, the authors weaken a thesis that, in some respects, is not devoid of interest. From at least two points of view, however, their article is paradoxical, if not pathetic—exactly like the U.S. position.

In a judgment rendered on May 12, 2014, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (Court) ordered Turkey to pay Cyprus unprecedented sums for nonpecuniary damage suffered by the relatives of missing persons and by the “enclaved” Greek Cypriot residents of the Karpas Peninsula stemming from the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and its aftermath. In doing so, the Court applied Article 41 on just satisfaction of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention or Convention) to an interstate complaint for the first time.

In Technische Universität Darmstadt v. Eugen Ulmer KG, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ or Court) addressed several important copyright issues stemming from a practice that continues to confound many legal practitioners and adjudicators: the mass digitization of library collections. The judgment adds to an emerging body of jurisprudence decided in the context of a trend toward greater digitization that could ultimately facilitate the development of a global, digital library. To date, the jurisprudence has largely been formed by cases challenging mass digitization that are percolating through the United States courts and have attracted international attention and criticism. The ECJ decision thus provides an important point of reference for evaluating how different jurisdictions balance the rights of authors against the public interest, as served by relevant fair use exceptions consistent with their international obligations under traditional copyright treaties, the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty, and the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) applicable to all WTO member states.

With Judgment No. 238/2014, the Italian Constitutional Court (hereinafter Court) quashed the Italian legislation setting out the obligation to comply with the sections of the 2012 decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy; Greece intervening) (Jurisdictional Immunities or Germany v. Italy) that uphold the rule of sovereign immunity with respect to compensation claims in Italian courts based on grave breaches of human rights, including—in the first place—the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Court found the legislation to be incompatible with Articles 2 and 24 of the Italian Constitution, which secure the protection of inviolable human rights and the right of access to justice (operative paras. 1, 2).

On July 3, 2014, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (Court) rendered its judgment in Georgia v. Russia, concerning Russia’s collective expulsion of a large number of Georgian nationals between October 2006 and January 2007. The Court held that Russia had violated several provisions of the 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Convention or ECHR), in particular Article of Protocol No. 4 to the ECHR (prohibition of collective expulsions). Because the Russian government had failed to cooperate with the Court by providing relevant information, the Court also found a violation of Article 38 of the ECHR, which obliges states to furnish “all necessary facilities” for the effective conduct of the Court’s investigation of the case. The Court deferred its decision on the question of “just satisfaction” under Article 41 pending further submissions by the parties. This was the first of three interstate proceedings that Georgia has brought against Russia under the special procedure of Article 33, and it is the first decision on the merits of these cases.

The fallout from the 2010 Kampala Review Conference for the United States has been explained by Harold Koh and Todd Buchwald, who were officially involved in the negotiations at the conference. The concerns they enumerate serve to implicate, inter alia, two issues of broad importance for the international community: the definition of the crime of aggression, and the clear divide between the positions of the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the rest of the Kampala participants with respect to the Councils role in implementing the Rome Statute’s new provisions on the crime of aggression. This Note, which focuses on those two issues, is partly a response to some of their criticisms and partly an independent assessment of the consequences of the Review Conference. It also evaluates the Kampala amendments to the Rome Statute’in particular, Articles 8 bis, 15 bis, and 15 ter—from the perspective of customary law and considers their impact on the role assigned to the Council under the UN Charter.