Whether tacked onto a bumper sticker, T-shirt, comic strip, or witty cartoon, humor offers laconic, entertaining, and simple snapshots of the issues and problems that plague societies. The text of the cartoon in the epigraph presents a humorous take on the main topic of the book, distilling a larger conversation on the limits of justice mechanisms and crimes of government officials into a monochromatic depiction of a serene chat between a father and his son. Contemplating the prospects of different career paths, the boy announces his budding interest in organized crime to his dad. Straight-faced and without missing a beat, his father responds, “Government or private sector?,” which draws on a long-standing perception that associates the incriminating behavior of government officials and private sector executives with unchecked impunity. A spin-off of the original cartoon emphasizes the latter, with the father recommending, “I personally would suggest government for you, my son. They never go to jail.”

Chapter One discusses China’s carbon neutrality objective and the essential strategies to achieve this long-term climate goal. The strategies focus on decarbonising China’s power sector, enabling fuel switch from coal to natural gas, electrifying end-use such as transport and industry, and adopting carbon removal mechanisms. Implementing these strategies will depend on China’s energy legal and regulatory systems. This chapter introduces the research context and structure of the book, highlighting its contribution to academia and practice. The chapters of the book are arranged based on the four essential strategies and pathways to achieve China’s carbon neutrality target, providing legal details concerning the development of China’s energy legal and regulatory systems.

In this chapter, Rossana Deplano focuses on the peaceful settlement of outer space disputes. This chapter argues that, traditionally, States have resorted to diplomatic, as opposed to legal, means for the settlement of disputes related to space activities. However, with the growing privatisation and commercialisation of space activities, this chapter avers that the current treaty framework for the settlement of space disputes is inadequate to cope with the demands of the new space industry. This chapter examines the principles governing the treaty framework for the peaceful settlement of space disputes as well as the existent dispute settlement mechanisms. It evaluates whether the apparently unstructured character of the UN treaty framework for dispute settlement is sufficient to deal with traditional and emerging space disputes, such as those likely to stem from space-mining operations. The argument is made that, although there is no all-encompassing and binding dispute settlement process, a specialised dispute settlement system endowed with enforcement powers is not desirable.

This chapter examines the process whereby the concept of jus cogens was introduced into international law during the 1968–69 Vienna Conference on the Law of Treaties. The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the conference’s final product, declared that some rules of international law command universal authority, with Article 53 recognizing ‘peremptory norms of general international law’ (without specifying which norms counted as such). Yet the negotiations through which jus cogens entered into the law of treaties were marked by wide-ranging debates about the nature and limits of the treaty-making power, and ultimately about the basic structure and orientation of international law more generally. On the one hand were lawyers and diplomats from socialist and nonaligned states for whom the concept was potentially useful as a means of undercutting the legality of unequal treaties, colonial concession agreements, and other substantively unjust instruments. On the other hand were lawyers and diplomats from industrialized countries who were committed to the traditional principle of pacta sunt servanda—the ‘sanctity of compacts’—and deeply skeptical of any attempt to introduce a normative spectrum in which a select group of rules would have controlling authority over all others.

This chapter discusses Putin’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions in September 2022. It also describes the sanctions imposed against Russia in response.

In this chapter, Nicholas Tsagourias and Fiona Middleton examine the role of fact-finding in ascertaining the facts supporting cyber attribution claims. More specifically, it considers the modalities of fact-finding, discusses the challenges it is encountering in the context of cyber attribution, and assesses the proposed cyber attribution mechanisms. The chapter concludes by identifying certain key features a cyber attribution fact-finding mechanism should exhibit to perform its tasks effectively and contribute to the settlement of cyber attribution disputes.

How does the cloak of immunity protecting foreign public officials under international law enable their impunity before foreign courts for the crimes they committed for private gain? This was the question with which the book commenced. In answering it, an interdisciplinary attempt was made to come to grips with the structural injustices created by international rules of immunity in preventing well-resourced and internationally protected political elites from accountability for trafficking in persons, corruption and money laundering, and drug trafficking. The ways in which these crimes are perpetrated by political elites constitute an advanced form of criminality in which the perpetrators abuse their authority and personal privileges as public officials and, in so doing, disguise misconduct in the official mandate and even under the pretense of law-abiding behavior. These are the ultimate economic crimes that occur at the nexus of power, privilege, and impunity.

This chapter considers the impact of the sanctions in the short-term: both the economic impact on the Russian state and the Russian people, as well as sanctions’ failure to prevent further military action by Russia in Ukraine. Unintended knock-on or ripple effects of the sanctions are also discussed, as are the effects of the sanctions on world trading patterns and the economic health of other nations. The chapter also considers the potential long-term effects of sanctions on the Russian economy.

This chapter examines a key aspect of the worldwide sanctions response: sanctioning individuals personally, including wealthy oligarchs holding vast, often-hidden wealth. This chapter explores how and why certain individuals were sanctioned, like Putin’s daughters and prominent Russian government and business figures. Lesser-known sanctioned figures are also discussed. It also discusses the difficulties of linking assets to sanctioned individuals once wealth is laundered and converted into certain types of assets. The chapter discusses measures taken by various jurisdictions to improve the effectiveness of sanctions by promoting financial transparency.

In this chapter, Therese O’Donnell brings together research literature from international law, disaster studies, and the mediation field to investigate the possibilities that mediation offers in the context of disaster assistance. This chapter argues that mediation is an untapped resource in the disaster milieu given its capacity for widening participation, contextual sensitivity and discretion, and proven success rate even in the most fraught environments. This chapter claims that mediation has the potential to facilitate partnered dispute resolution and create the conditions for paying heed to international legal standards of protection while reflecting notions of solidarity. Most importantly, it contends that mediation offers a route to avoid unhelpful political confrontation while ensuring that the needs of disaster-stricken populations are met in sustainable ways.