In 2015, frustrated by the slow pace of negotiations in the International Maritime Organisation, the EU issued Regulation 2015/757 on the monitoring, reporting, and verification of carbon dioxide emissions from maritime transport. Echoing the controversial Aviation Directive, the Regulation is intended to support a unilateral market-based measure, and includes emissions from outside EU territory. This raises the question whether, according to international law, the EU has jurisdiction to regulate such ‘extraterritorial’ circumstances. In exploring the appropriate jurisdictional bases, we argue that neither the Law of the Sea Convention, nor world trade law definitively decide this issue. We therefore devote more detailed attention to the customary international law of State jurisdiction supplementing these regimes. We seek to build on the existing analysis by examining climate change as a ‘common concern of mankind’. We argue that this emerging concept has distinct legal implications that can and should be accommodated within the interest-balancing exercise underlying the jurisdictional analysis.

Non-execution of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights is a matter of serious concern. In order to address it, the reasons for and dynamics of non-execution need to be fully considered. This paper engages with non-execution by sketching the underpinning issues that help to explain it and, we argue, must shape our responses to it. Through this engagement, we conclude that non-execution is properly understood as a phenomenon that requires political rather than legal responses. This calls into question the usefulness of the infringement proceedings contained in Article 46(4) of the Convention and which it has recently been suggested ought to be embraced in attempts to address non-execution. We argue that, even if the practical difficulties of triggering Article 46(4) proceedings could somehow be overcome, the dynamics of non-execution suggest that such proceedings would be both futile and counterproductive, likely to lead to backlash against the Court and unlikely to improve States’ execution of its judgments.

The field of human rights monitoring has become preoccupied with statistical methods for measuring performance, such as benchmarks and indicators. This is reflected within human rights scholarship, which has become increasingly ‘empirical’ in its approach. However, the relevant actors developing statistical approaches typically treat causality somewhat blithely, and this causes critical problems for such projects. This article suggests that resources—whether temporal or fiscal—may be better allocated towards improving methods for identifying violations rather than developing complicated, but ultimately ineffective, statistical methods for monitoring human rights performance.