Foreword

Abstract

On 22 October 2014, the Italian Constitutional Court (‘the Court’) issued a landmark judgment declaring the unconstitutionality of the Italian legislation concerning the jurisdictional immunity of states. 1 This legislation had been adopted in order to comply with the findings of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) judgment in Germany v. Italy , 2 particularly with those sections that upheld the rule of sovereign immunity in relation to compensation claims for grave breaches of human rights. 3 The Court found the relevant legislative provisions — which provided that Italian judges must decline jurisdiction when the case pending before them concerns the conduct of foreign states, for which the ICJ has excluded the jurisdiction of the (Italian) civil courts — to be incompatible with Articles 2 and 24 of the Italian Constitution, which secure the protection of inviolable human rights and the right of access to justice.