At the 2010 Review Conference in Kampala, the states parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided to adopt seven amendments to the Rome Statute that contemplate the possibility of the Court exercising jurisdiction over the crime of aggression subject to certain conditions. One condition was that the exercise of jurisdiction would be “subject to a decision to be taken after 1 January 2017 by the same majority of States Parties as is required for the adoption of an amendment to the Statute,” and another was that such jurisdiction could be exercised “only with respect to crimes of aggression committed one year after the ratification or acceptance of the amendments by thirty States Parties.” As these dates approach, we—two lawyers who represented the United States at the Kampala conference and who worked many hours on the United States’ reengagement with the ICC during the Obama administration—thought it an appropriate moment to take stock of where we are, how we got here, and where we might or should be headed with respect to the crime of aggression.

Exigent circumstances can extinguish or suspend a wide range of legal obligations. They may empower governments to seize property or quarantine individuals. They may excuse the nonperformance of private or public contractual obligations. And, of especial interest here, they may permit governments to deviate from their obligations under treaties or customary international law (CIL).

The Iran–United States Claims Tribunal (Tribunal) has functioned in the Hague since 1981. To date, the Tribunal has completed its work in over thirty-nine hundred cases, making it one of the most significant claims settlement efforts in history. Remaining on the Tribunal’s docket are several very large and complex claims between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America.

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).

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.

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.

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).