State Immunity and Serious Violations of Human Rights: Judgment No. 238 of 2014 of the Italian Constitutional Court Seven Years on

Abstract

On 3 February 2021, the US Supreme Court affirmed the icj’s Jurisdictional Immunities of the State Judgment of 2012—according to which “a State is not deprived of immunity by reason of the fact that it is accused of serious violations of international human rights law”—adopting, thus, a position opposite to that taken by the Italian Corte Costituzionale in its well-known Judgment No. 238 of 2014. Based on a realist-constructivist theoretical approach to international law, this article argues that the only plausible legal perspective justifying Judgment No. 238 is a dynamic one. However, the Corte Costituzionale has substantially failed to argue the plausibility of the expected change in existing international law that it wished to promote for the future. To take its intended big leap realistically and successfully, the Italian position would have deserved a sounder theoretical analysis of international law and of the world system in which the latter is meant to work.