Public International Law in Europe

Fact Sheet

Experience

    • The Center for Reproductive Rights in securing UN recommendations to overturn El Salvador’s criminalization of abortion.
    • Human Dignity Trust in a joint intervention on behalf of the Human Dignity Trust, International Committee of Jurists and Commonwealth Lawyers Association, which saw a law in Belize that disproportionately affects gay men ruled unconstitutional. London co-managing partner Lord Goldsmith KC also acted as lead advocate before the Supreme Court of Belize in the course of the proceedings.
    • The LaGrand Case (Germ. v. U.S.), 2001 I.C.J. 466. Germany on its claims for violations by the United States of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations in respect of two German nationals sentenced to death in state court proceedings in the United States and of its obligation to abide by an order of provisional measures issued by the ICJ at the outset of the case. The ICJ upheld the Vienna Convention claims and, settling years of controversy, also held that provisional measures indicated by the ICJ are binding.
    • Central European Media Enterprises (CME) in an arbitration against the Czech Republic brought under The Netherlands-Czech BIT and the UNCITRAL Rules, asserting claims that the Czech Media Council’s actions had deprived CME of its interest in the most successful commercial television station in Eastern Europe. The Tribunal issued an award of over $350 million, which the Czech Republic satisfied.
    • The lead claimant in Reineccius, First Eagle, and Mathieu v. Bank for International Settlements, in which a five-member tribunal constituted under the 1930 Hague Agreement awarded private shareholders some US$500 million.
    • The Coca-Cola Company in defense of a lawsuit alleging human rights violations against workers at a Turkish bottling plant.
    • The European Commission as amicus curiae in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, in which the EC urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take a rigorous international law approach to the Alien Tort Statute.
    • Vo v. France, ECHR Case No. 53924/00 (2004). Amicus curiae Center for Reproductive Rights in a case before the European Court of Human Rights, which cited the amicus brief extensively in its judgment in favor of our client’s position in the case, the first in which the ECHR was asked to grant an unborn foetus the status of a “person” under the European Convention.
    • Prosecutor v. Blaškic (Trial Chamber, 18 July 1997), aff’d in part, rev’d in part (Appeals Chamber, 29 Oct.1997). The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights as amicus curiae in arguing before the Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in a case in which the Chamber enforced a subpoena against a state official.
    • Social and Economic Rights Action Center v. Nigeria, Afr. Comm. H.P.R. Commc’n No. 370/09. Assisting SERAC in its application before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights seeking redress from the Nigerian government for the forcible eviction of 300,000 inhabitants from their homes in 1990. In September 2013, the ACHPR issued a decision declaring the case admissible and Debevoise is now assisting with the substantive Communication to the African Commission on Human People’s Rights.