Chapter Six introduces the overarching law provisions in the Energy Conservation Law related to low-carbon development targets, energy efficiency regulation, energy storage, and financial support prescribed to incentivise these mechanisms. Energy efficiency and energy storage are critical measures that can help China achieve the carbon neutrality objective in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. By improving the energy efficiency of industrial sectors, buildings, and transportation, China can reduce the amount of energy needed to achieve its economic and climate goals, which benefits energy security and emission reductions. This chapter examines the essential regulatory measures adopted by the Energy Conservation Law and critically analyses the regulatory development concerning energy efficiency and energy storage in China.

In the late 1980s, a winding series of drug trafficking charges against the then de facto leader of Panama, General Manuel Noriega, led the US government to seek his arrest, following a controversial military intervention into Panama, and trial before a US court. The rejection of his entitlement to foreign official immunity by the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida (a verdict affirmed by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals) culminated in an unprecedented decision at the time – long-term imprisonment of the Panamanian strongman in the United States. Not only did the Noriega court pave the way for subsequent prosecutions of top-tier state officials involved in drug trafficking in the United States, but it also brightly reverberated in the scholarly writing of successive decades concerning matters of head-of-state immunity. It also gained international notoriety and was hailed to be a “triumph for diplomacy and a triumph for justice.”

In this chapter, Eric De Brabandere zeroes in on the settlement of disputes in the context of investment arbitration. This chapter accepts that the case law of the current investor-State dispute settlement system is inconsistent and unpredictable and requires reform. However, this chapter claims that the problems associated with the dispute settlement system for investment arbitration cannot be isolated from broader questions on the coherence of general international law, the determinacy of legal norms, and the role of arbitral tribunals in the interpretation of these norms. The chapter argues that coherence is a matter of degrees and that a ‘middle ground’ might be to consider that international investment law forms part of international law, which is a coherent legal system from the perspective of the sources or the secondary norms of international law. Consistency, on the other hand, is not completely achievable in the current investment landscape, given its lack of uniformity in terms of substantive law and ad hoc method of dispute settlement. Consistency must be sought through different options, such as redrafting investment treaties to ensure better balance and predictability of outcomes.

Chapter 13 examines how the use of force relates to the legal regimes governing the international commons. These include the UN Law of the Sea Convention, the Chicago Convention on Civil Aviation and the Outer Space Treaty.

This chapter provides an in-depth look at how the sanctions regulations have affected finance and currency flows around the world. It examines SWIFT, the inter-bank worldwide messaging system, and how certain Russian banks were eventually banned from the platform. The chapter discusses correspondent banking, in which banks hold accounts for each other, and payment systems, which serve a variety of functions including facilitating the conversion of currencies. It examines how the sanctions disrupted the ability of Russian banks to carry out business using these tools.

This chapter discusses the disruptions to the world food and fertilizer supply arising in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This chapter discusses the humanitarian impacts of sanctions, both in terms of the sanctions against Russia and with respect to the use of sanctions more generally.

In 1999, a Bangladeshi woman claimed she had been enslaved by the Second Secretary of the Bahrain Mission to the United Nations in New York City and his wife.1 After signing a contract, in which she agreed to work for their household as a domestic servant, she stated her passport was confiscated by the couple, and she was left to care for their children and perform household duties that held her in near involuntary servitude2 – akin to trafficking in persons. In response, the defendants claimed to be protected by diplomatic immunity that makes serving diplomats exempt from the jurisdiction of foreign courts. Although the case was eventually settled for an undisclosed amount of damages that the Bahrani couple paid to the domestic worker,3 in its statement of interest, the US Department of State categorically emphasized that serving diplomats and their family members hold immunity from suit in the United States for both official and private acts.

In this chapter, Antonio Segura Serrano examines the potential for new and emerging technologies to be used to help settle international disputes. This chapter considers how digital evidence can be gathered and evaluated by dispute settlement bodies. This chapter also analyses what role online dispute settlement bodies can play in the settlement of international disputes. In doing so, it assesses the practice of online dispute resolution systems already in place for online transactions among individuals (both private and public systems) in order to identify any features that can be transposed to inter-State dispute settlement. This chapter concludes by explaining that these systems, in particular their use of algorithms and artificial Intelligence, offer some important lessons for State-to-State dispute settlement.