December 16, 2015, saw the International Court of Justice (ICJ or the Court) render final judgment in the joined cases of Certain Activities Carried Out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua) (Border Area) and Construction of a Road in Costa Rica Along the San Juan River (Nicaragua v. Costa Rica) (Road). Together, these cases represented an opportunity for the Court to advance and clarify its thinking on the role of environmental impact assessments (EIA) in general international law, as first introduced in its decision in Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay (Argentina v. Uruguay) (Pulp Mills), with both Costa Rica (in Border Area) and Nicaragua (in Road) alleging that the other had failed to carry out an EIA with respect to certain, potentially environmentally harmful, activities. They also raised some interesting questions regarding remedies for the breach of provisional measures awarded under Article 41 of the ICJ Statute.

On July 31, 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rendered its final decision on a claim brought by the liquidated Russian company OAO Neftyanaya Kompaniya Yukos (Yukos) against the Russian Federation (Russia), a decision that is the last in a series of three decisions in this case relating respectively to the admissibility of the application, the merits, and just satisfaction.

A couple weeks prior to the ECtHR’s decision, three arbitral tribunals established under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) and functioning under the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules had issued their final awards based on claims brought by three former shareholders of Yukos under the Energy Charter Treaty. The dispute, while brought by the shareholders of Yukos, in essence is the same as the one brought by Yukos against Russia before the European Court of Human Rights.

In Dan Cake v. Hungary, an arbitral tribunal constituted under the auspices of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) issued a rare finding of denial of justice in its adjudication of the claims by Portuguese investor Dan Cake, alleging that the Hungarian court’s actions during the liquidation proceedings of its subsidiary were a violation of the fair and equitable treatment provision of the Hungary-Portugal Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). The decision adds an example of the factual circumstances that lead to a finding of denial of justice and reaffirms the stringent requirements that need to be satisfied in order to succeed on such a claim.

On November 25, 2015, the U.K. Supreme Court dismissed a case in which the British Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and Defense failed to hold a public inquiry into an atrocity committed in 1948 by British troops in the British protectorate of Malaya, today Malaysia. The case is of particular interest because it concerns the obligations of states for atrocities committed in the past, before their obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (European Convention) or a comparable treaty, entered into force. Whereas the principle of the nonretroactivity of treaties protects a state from responsibility for acts committed before the human rights treaty entered into force for that state, the issue in this case was whether the state nonetheless had an obligation to investigate the crimes of the past.

This year, 2016, marks the sixtieth anniversary of the discovery of “Minamata Disease,” so-named for the town ravaged by the effects of methylmercury poisoning, and the namesake of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. As of April 22, 2016—Earth Day—128 nations have signed and 25 have ratified the international treaty designed to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic releases and emission of mercury and mercury compounds.