Jessup moot court competition 2026: evento di presentazione

The right to intervene in contentious proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is governed by Articles 62 and 63 of the Court's Statute. Article 62 permits a state to request intervention where it considers it has an interest of a legal nature that may be affected by the decision, subject to the Court's discretion. Article 63 grants a more automatic right of intervention to states parties to a multilateral convention whose construction is in question. Historically, the Court interpreted these provisions restrictively: in the Nuclear Tests cases and the 1981 Tunisia/Libya Continental Shelf case, intervention requests were denied for failing to demonstrate a sufficiently concrete legal interest, and successful interventions (such as Nicaragua in El Salvador/Honduras, 1990) remained rare. The issue has gained renewed prominence with mass interventions in cases of broad international concern. In Gambia v. Myanmar (Genocide Convention) and Ukraine v. Russia (Genocide Convention), dozens of states filed Article 63 declarations of intervention, raising questions about whether such proceedings risk becoming actio popularis litigation. The South Africa v. Israel case has similarly attracted numerous interveners. Critics argue that mass intervention politicizes the Court and strains its procedures; supporters contend it reflects the erga omnes character of the obligations at stake, as recognized in Barcelona Traction (1970) and reaffirmed in Belgium v. Senegal (2012). Today, the core dispute concerns the threshold for an "interest of a legal nature" under Article 62, the scope of Article 63 intervention (whether limited to treaty interpretation or extending to merits arguments), and whether non-state actors or international organizations should have any analogous standing. The Court's recent orders admitting interveners have not fully clarified these limits, leaving the doctrine in active development.

Rare earth elements and critical minerals (lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and the lanthanides) are essential to the energy transition, defense technology, and consumer electronics. A disproportionate share of known deposits lies on or beneath lands traditionally occupied by indigenous peoples, including the Lithium Triangle of Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina; nickel and cobalt reserves in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Philippines; and rare earth deposits in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Greenland. This geography has generated escalating conflicts between extractive interests and indigenous communities seeking to protect ancestral territories, water sources, and cultural heritage. The relevant international legal framework rests on ILO Convention 169 (1989), the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007), and the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2016). Central to these instruments is the requirement of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) before states authorize extractive projects on indigenous lands. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in cases such as Saramaka v. Suriname (2007) and Sarayaku v. Ecuador (2012), has held that FPIC is a binding obligation flowing from the right to property and cultural integrity. National constitutional courts in Colombia, Canada, and the Philippines have echoed these holdings. Despite this framework, disputes persist over whether FPIC requires actual consent or merely consultation, whether subsoil resources belong to the state regardless of indigenous surface rights, and how benefit-sharing should be structured. Recent flashpoints include lithium projects on Atacameño lands in Chile, Sámi opposition to the Kallak iron and rare earths project in Sweden, and indigenous-led litigation against deep-sea and Arctic mining. With major economies racing to secure supply chains independent of China, the pressure on indigenous territories — and on the legal doctrines protecting them — is intensifying.

Article 38(1)(c) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice lists "the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations" as a formal source of international law, alongside treaties and custom. The provision was carried over from Article 38 of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice (1920), drafted by the Advisory Committee of Jurists to prevent non liquet — a situation in which the Court could not decide a case for lack of applicable law. The term "civilized nations" reflected the Eurocentric and colonial assumptions of its drafters and is today widely regarded as anachronistic; modern commentators and the International Law Commission read it as referring simply to legal principles common to the world's principal legal systems. In practice, the Court and arbitral tribunals have invoked general principles to fill gaps in treaty and customary law. Examples include res judicata (Genocide Convention case), estoppel (Temple of Preah Vihear), good faith (Nuclear Tests), proportionality, equity, and procedural fairness. Two methodological approaches exist: principles derived from a comparative survey of national legal systems (the traditional view), and principles intrinsic to the international legal order itself, such as the principle of sovereign equality or pacta sunt servanda. The ILC's ongoing work on "General Principles of Law," led by Special Rapporteur Marcelo Vázquez-Bermúdez, has produced draft conclusions distinguishing these two categories and clarifying their identification. The contemporary debate concerns the legitimacy and methodology of identifying such principles in a pluralistic legal order. Questions include how representative a comparative survey must be, whether non-Western legal traditions are adequately considered, and how general principles relate to jus cogens and erga omnes norms. The topic also touches on the role of general principles in investor-state arbitration and international criminal law, where tribunals frequently invoke them but with varying rigor.

The doctrine of sovereign immunity historically shielded states from the jurisdiction of foreign domestic courts on an absolute basis. Over the twentieth century, most jurisdictions shifted to a restrictive theory, distinguishing acta jure imperii (sovereign acts, which remain immune) from acta jure gestionis (commercial acts, which do not). This shift was codified in instruments such as the European Convention on State Immunity (1972), the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (1976), the U.K. State Immunity Act (1978), and ultimately the UN Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property (2004), which has not yet entered into force but is widely regarded as reflecting customary international law in significant respects. Economic harm cases sit at the contested boundary of this doctrine. When a foreign state's regulatory measures — expropriations, currency controls, sovereign debt restructurings, or sanctions — cause loss to private citizens of another state, courts must determine whether the conduct is commercial or sovereign in nature. Argentine sovereign bond litigation (NML Capital v. Argentina), Iranian asset cases in U.S. courts (Bank Markazi v. Peterson), and various Holocaust-era property claims have produced divergent outcomes. The ICJ's Jurisdictional Immunities of the State judgment (Germany v. Italy, 2012) reaffirmed that immunity applies even to grave breaches of international law when the acts are sovereign in character, though the territorial tort exception remains debated. The current frontier concerns whether new exceptions are emerging for terrorism financing, cyber operations causing economic damage, corruption, or violations of peremptory norms. The United States has expanded its terrorism exception under FSIA; Canada has adopted similar legislation; and Italy's Constitutional Court (Judgment 238/2014) refused to apply the ICJ's ruling domestically, creating ongoing friction. Delegates must navigate the tension between protecting access to justice for harmed individuals and preserving the equality and independence of sovereigns — par in parem non habet imperium.