On July 23, 2025, the International Court of Justice delivered a unanimous advisory opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, the third opinion on climate change from an international judicial body. Requested by consensus by the UN General Assembly in 2023, the proceedings drew unprecedented participation from ninety-six states and eleven international organizations. In the Opinion, the Court confirmed its advisory jurisdiction over the legal questions posed and found no compelling reason to decline the request. It identified the “most directly relevant applicable law” as the climate change treaties, UNCLOS, other environmental treaties, customary international law, and international human rights law, and held that the climate change treaties are not lex specialis. The Court affirmed obligations under the Paris Agreement to pursue the 1.5°C “primary temperature goal” and that there were limits to parties’ discretion in formulating their nationally determined contributions. Drawing on its prior decisions, the Court held that the customary duty to prevent significant environmental harm applies to the climate system under a stringent due diligence standard, and recognized cooperation as a legal obligation rather than a matter of choice. On sea-level rise, it found no obligation to update maritime baselines that were established in conformity with UNCLOS and concluded that statehood persists despite the loss of a constituent element. On legal consequences, the Court applied the customary law of state responsibility and observed that the entire panoply of legal consequences could apply to breaches, but indicated that particularized remedies would be fact-specific.

On October 6, 2025, Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court convicted Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as “Ali Kushayb,” of twenty-seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from the 2003–2004 attacks on the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa communities of West Darfur. The judgment is the first conviction in the Darfur situation, the first in any situation referred to the Court by the United Nations Security Council, and the Court’s first conviction for gender-based persecution—on the novel basis that Fur men of fighting age were targeted because of a “perceived gender role” associating masculinity with combatant status. The decision confronts three doctrinal questions: Article 22(1) legality for nationals of non-states parties reached by Security Council referral; intersectionality of gender, ethnicity, and political identity under Article 7(1)(h); and fair trial guarantees under territorial-state non-cooperation. The judgment is nevertheless not final; the defence appealed on November 6, 2025; the reparations phase opened on December 9, 2025, the same day the twenty-year sentence was issued.

On December 11, 2025, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered a landmark judgment in Tsaava and Others v. Georgia. The case arose from the Georgian authorities’ forceful dispersal of major public protests outside the Georgian Parliament in Tbilisi on the night of June 20–21, 2019, also known as “Gavrilov’s night.” Thousands of people gathered to protest the authorities’ invitation to Sergei Gavrilov, an outspoken member of the Russian Duma, to sit in the chair reserved for the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament. The Grand Chamber found extensive violations of the European Convention on Human Rights stemming from the state’s violent dispersal of the protest and the excessive and indiscriminate use of “less-lethal” weapons, specifically kinetic impact projectiles and rubber bullets, against demonstrators and journalists. Beyond vindicating individual applicants, the Grand Chamber directed Georgia to take specific measures to conduct an effective investigation into the events and to put in place domestic regulations on crowd control and the limits of police force.