This work draws from accounts on the nature and legal effects of soft law instruments in EU and international law with the ultimate aim to construct a theoretical framework for recognition of EU competition soft law—guidelines, communications, notices, and the like—in the judicial discourse of national courts of the European Union. “Recognition” is used to encompass instances in which the national judiciary either explicitly interprets—that is, agrees or disagrees with—the content of competition soft instruments, or treats their substance in a roundabout, implicit way—without explicit reference to soft law in the judgment proper. This second option is called “the persuaded judiciary scenario.” Importantly, a foundational assumption of the current work is that courts do not transform soft law into hard law when subjecting the former to judicial interpretation/recognition.2

Under Chapter VII the UN Security Council has the authority to legally condemn certain behaviors by enacting binding measures on both states and individuals. This has been interpreted through measures undertaken by the Security Council, such as the institution of international tribunals on an inter-state level, and the imposition of sanctions on a personal level.

Focusing on Africa and Europe, this Article aspires to demonstrate how regional actors have acted in order to undermine the UN Security Chapter VII punitive cosmopolitanism, either through the institution of regional criminal courts meant to antagonize the International Criminal Court or through judicial decisions that clearly negate the Council's sanctions regime. In order to preserve international punitive cosmopolitanism, the Article will proceed to develop how regional jurisdictional initiatives can be integrated in the general international constitutional order, in both the criminal and the civil/administrative field.

“Twenty years ago today our country fell into deep ditches of darkness—twenty years later, today, we are a country united and a nation elevated.”

Those were the words of Rwanda's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louis Mushikiwabo, on 7 April 2014, as he spoke to the Rwandan People at the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. Thousands of Rwandans gathered at Rwanda's main sports stadium, the Amahoro stadium, in Kigali to mourn their losses together. Ban Kimoon, the UN Secretary-General, lit a flame at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center and not only expressed his solidarity with all Rwandans, but also emphasized that the United Nations could and should have done more to avoid the most devastating chapter in Rwanda's history.

The case C-270/12 UK v. Council and Parliament is a much-awaited judgment addressing the problem of the delegation of powers to European agencies in the financial markets. By distancing itself from the Advocate General's conclusions, the Court of Justice upheld the legitimacy of the use of Article 114 TFEU to allow the European and Securities Market Authority to prohibit or restrict certain financial products on the market. The Court also gave greater flexibility to the Meroni doctrine and superseded the Romano doctrine. The Court's decision is welcome, especially in light of the increasingly extensive use of European agencies to regulate and supervise the internal market.

Protocol n°16 expands the advisory jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter ECtHR) by introducing a mechanism of litigation-related opinions (“avis contentieux”). It affords the highest national courts and tribunals the ability to ask the ECtHR for an advisory opinion on questions of principle related to the interpretation and application of the rights and freedoms defined in the European Convention on Human Rights (hereinafter Convention) and the Protocols thereto.