In Sabeh el Leil v. France, the European Court of Human Rights (‘‘ECtHR’’ or ‘‘the Court’’) ruled for the second time that a contracting state had violated the right to a fair trial afforded by Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (‘‘Convention’’) by denying access to its courts to an embassy employee suing for wrongful dismissal on the grounds that the employer enjoyed sovereign immunity. The ECtHR had first ruled so a year earlier in Cudak v. Lithuania, where the plaintiff was also an embassy employee.

Between 2007 and 2009, Italy and Libya (then under the rule of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi) concluded several agreements to combat clandestine immigration. Pursuant to these agreements, Italy instated a policy of sending undocumented migrants and asylum seekers who had crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Africa back to Libya. In a number of cases, boats were intercepted on the high seas, and those on board sent back to Libya without a prior individualized assessment of their situation and protection needs. The present judgment concerns one such ‘‘push back operation’’ during which Italy intercepted a group of Somali and Eritrean nationals on the high seas, took them back to Tripoli, and handed them over to the Libyan authorities.

On December 15, 2011, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (‘‘ECtHR’’) issued its final ruling in Al-Khawaja & Tahery v. United Kingdom. This highly anticipated ruling reexamined the United Kingdom’s laws that allowed convictions based primarily on the statement of a witness unavailable for cross-examination. This is the second time the ECtHR has visited this issue, after the U.K. courts declined to follow the earlier ECtHR’s decision that found that the U.K. law violated the European Convention on Human Rights (‘‘European Convention’’).

On August 30, 2011, a majority of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (‘‘ICC’’) rejected the appeal of the Government of Kenya to the earlier admissibility decision of Pre-Trial Chamber II in the case of Prosecutor v. Francis Kirimi Muthaura, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and Mohammed Hussein Ali, one of two cases arising from the ICC’s investigations into crimes against humanity committed during the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya.

On July 7, 2011, the United States Supreme Court declined to stay the execution of Humberto Leal García, a Mexican national who had been convicted some sixteen years ago in Texas of murder.1 Relying on the decision of the International Court of Justice (‘‘ICJ’’) in the Avena case,2 García contended that the United States had violated his right to consular notification and access under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (‘‘Consular Convention’’).3 He sought the stay so that the U.S. Congress could consider enactment of proposed legislation to implement the ICJ decision.4 In a 5-4 decision, the Court rejected his argument, stating that ‘‘[t]he Due Process Clause does not prohibit a State from carrying out a lawful judgment in light of unenacted legislation that might someday authorize a collateral attack on that judgment.’’5 García was executed by lethal injection that evening.

On January 17, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (‘‘D.C. Circuit’’) issued its decision in Republic of Argentina v. B.G. Group PLC, overturning a final award of a United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (‘‘UNCITRAL’’) arbitral tribunal issued in favor of BG Group PLC (‘‘BG Group’’). According to the Court, the arbitral tribunal exceeded its authority by taking jurisdiction over the dispute when BG Group failed to first submit its claims to the courts of Argentina for a period of eighteen months, as required by the Agreement Between theGovernment of the UnitedKingdomof Great Britainand Northern Ireland andthe Government of the Republic of Argentina for the Promotion and Protection of Investments (the ‘‘U.K.-Argentina BIT’’).

On December 21, 2011, the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘‘ECJ’’) issued a long-awaited judgment in a reference for preliminary ruling in proceedings brought by the Air Transport Association of America, American Airlines, Inc., Continental Airlines, Inc., and United Airlines, Inc. (‘‘ATA and others’’) against the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The judgment intends to clarify the highly contentious issue of whether the application of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (‘‘EU ETS’’) to aviation activities under the Directive 2008/101/EC is compatible with international law, and whether it violates the sovereignty of other states or the freedom of the high seas.