The mission of the The Italian Yearbook of International Law is to make available to the English speaking public the Italian contribution to the literature and practice of international law. It is fitting with this mission that this Volume XXIV opens with a focus on the controversial Judgment No. 238/2014 of the Italian Constitutional Court on the unconstitutionality of State immunity for international crimes. The five contributions by Francioni, Pisillo Mazzeschi, Bothe, Cataldi, and Palchetti provide a variety of opinions on the timely issue of how traditional doctrines of State immunity may be reconciled with the need to protect victims of international crimes and what kind of alternative forms of protection may be available when immunity prevents access to judicial remedies.
The doctrinal section of the Volume includes also a symposium on new horizons in international environmental law. It discusses the new negotiations on the conservation of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (Scovazzi), the rise of intra-environmental conflicts in the green economy (Montini), equity and benefit-sharing in the Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (Morgera), EU and US perspectives on climate governance in view of Paris 2015 (Bakker), the challenge of protecting the Arctic environment (Cinelli), and the relevance of environmental protection for the human rights law regime (Petersmann).
The section on Notes and Comments contains contributions on the protection of cultural identities in the Old City of Jerusalem (Bories Fontana-Giusti), on the US litigation concerning Argentina’s sovereign default (Mauro), on the Italian implementation of the Convention on Violence against Women (Staiano), and on the first Italian prosecution of the crime of piracy in the Montecristo case (Bo).
The section on Practice of International Courts and Tribunals provides an analytical overview of the current judicial activities of the ICJ (Amoroso), the ITLOS and other law of the sea jurisdictions (Treves), international and mixed criminal courts and tribunals (Focarelli), the WTO (Sacerdoti), and ICSID (Savarese).
The following part of the Volume continues the tradition of the Italian Yearbook of providing reports on the contemporary Italian practice of international law, including judicial practice (Cataldi and Iovane), diplomatic and parliamentary practice (Gargiulo and Nesi), treaty practice (Altafin and Mancini), and legislation (Acconci).
The remaining part of the Volume contains a bibliographical index of Italian contributions to international law scholarship published in 2014 (Bartolini and Chechi), a book review section edited by Gestri, and an analytical index for easy consultation and reference to materials cited in the Yearbook.