On October 22, 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rendered its judgment in the case of Skatteverket v. Hedqvist. In this important decision the CJEU sheds light on the value added tax (VAT) aspects of the use of bitcoins. Supplying bitcoins (or better, paying with bitcoins) does not constitute a VAT taxable service, so paying with bitcoins is not a barter transaction. The mere exchange of bitcoins into traditional currency (or vice versa) also remains outside the scope of VAT. The exchange service is VAT exempt.

In June 2015, President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir of Sudan attended a meeting of the African Union (AU) in Johannesburg, South Africa, despite the fact that a warrant had been issued for his arrest by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in the Darfur region. Although South Africa, a party to the ICC, was obliged to arrest Al Bashir and surrender him to the ICC under the terms of the Rome Statute of the ICC, the South African government made no attempt to apprehend him. On the application of a South African public interest law firm, the North Gauteng High Court ordered that the government was required by law to arrest and detain Al Bashir. Al Bashir was, however, allowed to leave South Africa.

On December 10, 2014, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the United Nations Convention on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration, also known as the Mauritius Convention on Transparency, which was prepared by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). The Mauritius Convention is intended to provide states with an efficient mechanism for applying the UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration (Transparency Rules) in investor-state arbitrations arising under investment treaties concluded before the Transparency Rules’ effective date of April 1, 2014. The Mauritius Convention was opened for signature on March 17, 2015, in Port Louis, Mauritius.

On November 27, 2013, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) handed down a judgment on an appeal from the South African Police Service and Prosecution Authority in National Commissioner of the South African Police Service v. Southern African Human Rights Litigation Centre (the Decision). The Court decided that the South African Police Service is empowered to initiate investigations into alleged crimes against humanity committed in the territory of another state, irrespective of whether the alleged perpetrators are present in South Africa, and ordered the authorities to initiate such investigations.

State responsibility has been on the agenda of the International Law Commission since its earliest days. Nearly fifty years ago, in 1949, the Commission identified state responsibility as one of fourteen topics in international law ready for codification. Only in 1956, however, did the Commission, with F.V. Garcia Amador as special rapporteur, begin in earnest its state responsibility codification project. Garcia Amador, whose work focused on the responsibility of states toward aliens on their territory, submitted a number of reports through 1961, but limited discussion was devoted to the topic. A review of the early history of the Commission's state responsibility project, as well as other efforts at codification of this area of law, may be found in the ILC's 1969 Yearbook