Recent Developments Relating to Adjudication

As we get set to consider adjudication and jurisdiction issues, you will be interested in a few recent developments. Just today the European Court of Justice handed down a decision on data sharing between European states and the U.S. (in particular), that will have a massive impact on U.S. internet-based businesses (article on this here).

In other news, you will no doubt have been following the unfolding story of the U.S. airstrikes against a hospital run by Medicin Sans Frontiers  in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in which some 22 people were killed and many more injured. The American explanation for this killing of non-combatants, and potentially targeting a hospital, has been "evolving" over the last few days. The targeting of a hospital is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and thus a war crime, so the reasons are important. Of considerable interest, given our discussion of jurisdiction, is whether the International Criminal Court might be able to exercise jurisdiction over the incident, a question that is taken up in this article.