Monthly archive October, 2014

Italian Constitutional Court Judgment 238/2014 declares customary international law on state immunity inapplicable in the Italian legal order as far as war crimes and crimes against humanity are concerned

Summary provided by Francesco Messineo, of the Editorial Board. QIL will devote in the following weeks a Zoom-out to the legal issues arising from the Italian Constitutional Court no 238/2014. The Judgment in brief On 22 October 2014, the Italian Constitutional Court (‘the Court’) rendered a Judgment concerning the constitutional legitimacy of certain Italian norms...

A cure or a curse? Entry into force of the UN Watercourses Convention and the Global Opening of the UNECE Water Convention

1. Introduction 2014 will surely be seen as a landmark year in the evolution of the international water law. On the 17th August, 17 years on from its adoption, the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourse (UN Watercourses Convention) finally entered into force.[1]  While entry into force of this global...

Comparing the 1992 UNECE Helsinki Water Convention with the 1997 UN New York Convention on international water-course: harmonization over conflict

1. Introducing a comparative analysis The two Conventions under consideration have raised the question of their mutual compatibility ever since the adoption of the later one, given their basically identical material scope. From a systemic standpoint, the reason for elaborating the New York Convention (NYC) further to the Helsinki Convention (HC) could be found in the...

Parallel treaties, (un)parallel commitments? The struggle between universalism and regionalism in international water law

Introduced by Maurizio Arcari and Enrico Milano   While long-awaited, the entry into force on 17 August 2014 of the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses – a framework treaty designed to set forth general principles for the equitable use and protection of transboundary freshwaters – is not...

Conscientious Objection to Same-Sex Unions as a Reasonable Accommodation

1. Introduction With their thought-provoking contributions, Ryan Hill and Michel Miaille have made me think again about the many questions, which to my mind, were left unanswered by the ECtHR’s reasoning in Eweida and Others v the UK.[1] I have been challenged, on the one hand, by the emphasis Miaille puts on the difference between...