The past decade has witnessed an increase in the number of investor-State arbitrations. With the increase has been a widening of the range and deepening of the complexity of issues raised, addressed, and resolved in the cases. In recent years, novel procedural issues have surfaced. One of them is whether arbitral tribunals have the authority to adjudicate claims of multiple investors in a single proceeding, and if so, how they should conduct the arbitration. In 2011, the tribunal in Abaclat & Others v. Argentine Republic, constituted under the auspices of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), held that claims of more than one investor, in fact, multiple investors, are admissible and that the tribunal had jurisdiction over them. Since Abaclat, another tribunal has similarly held that collective claims could be heard under the ICSID framework.2 The issue of multiple investors is one that will likely not fade so it is fitting that the Abaclat decision be re-published in International Legal Materials to promote wider access to it.

On November 27, 2012, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) issued a landmark decision on the question of the compatibility of the European Stability Mechanism Treaty with European Union law. The Court ruled on the following issues related to the permanent bailout fund: the validity of Decision 2011/199/EU adopted by the European Council to amend Article 136 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TEFU) in accordance with the simplified revision procedures; whether the European Council exceeded its competence by using the simplified revision procedure under Article 48(6) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) to establish the stability mechanism in violation of the treaties; the compatibility of the Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) with the treaties founding the European Union; and whether Decision 2011/199/EU encroached on the competence of the Union to coordinate economic and monetary policies of the Member States.

Only three years after Abbott v. Abbott, the first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court had taken up interpretation of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (Convention), the Court again considered the Convention in Chafin v. Chafin.

On December 14, 2012, member states of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approved the Final Acts of the World Conference on International Telecommunications. The ITU is the specialized agency of the United Nations fostering cooperation on information and communication technologies, and, through world conferences, it periodically revises the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), a treaty the ITU adopted in 1988 However, in December 2012, the Final Acts, the manner in which they were approved, and the World Conference proved controversial, and these controversies will adversely affect the impact of the Final Acts and the revised ITRs on international telecommunications law.

For nearly three decades, the United States has offered monetary rewards designed to facilitate the apprehension and transfer for trial of suspects when their trial would directly advance American national interests. In the 1990s, for example, posters and matchbooks appeared across the Balkans with contact information available to anyone who might be willing to assist in the transfer of Slobodan Milošević or Radovan Karadžić to face charges before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugloslavia. In Congress’s view, this rewards program has helped to generate actionable intelligence that has prevented terrorist attacks, aided convictions of key suspects charged with participation in other acts of international terror, and served as “one of the most valuable assets the U.S. Government has in the fight against international terrorism.” In his public comments introducing this legislation, the United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes acknowledged that fourteen payments were made under existing legislation in the two years prior to passage of this bill, averaging $400,000 per person. Details remain classified of course, but the rewards have provided instrumental incentives in numerous high profile cases, inter alia, the arrest of the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein at the hands of American military forces following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.