On 20 March, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an important decision on patentable subject matter, Mayo Collaborative Services v Prometheus Laboratories Inc.  Like the equally anticipated Bilski v Kappos (2010), the decision has potentially far-reaching consequences for patents in the bioscience and information technology domains but is very limited in its terms.

The ICJ’s judgment in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy; Greece intervening) offers, in the context of state immunity, the longest discussion of peremptory norms in the history of the World Court. The judgment made certain important contributions to the understanding of this legal concept.

The Lubanga verdict of the International Criminal Court was always going to be monumental: after all, it is the first decision delivered by the world’s first permanent criminal justice institution (albeit almost a decade after it came into being).   Indeed, it is not only monumental in terms of its significance.  After hearing 67 witnesses over 204 days of hearings and reviewing 1373 items of evidence, the Trial Chamber issued a judgment amounting to more than 600 pages in length: certainly enough to keep international lawyers busy for a while.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV – aka ‘drones’), are increasingly used in conflict zones (and elsewhere) for a variety of tasks, ranging from surveillance to targeted killings. To those who question the morality of using unmanned aircrafts piloted with an iPhone from an office in Virginia to kill human beings, it is retorted that remotely-piloted aircrafts allow for more considered and less emotion-driven decision-making. This ‘laudable’ objective is on the verge of being successfully attained: according to a 2009 U.S. Air Force report, by 2047 drones will be fully automated.