The 2025 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change constitutes a diligent and reasoned exposition of the main bodies of international law on climate change. The Court read this law harmoniously and clearly identified States’ obligations as well as the legal consequences of breach. Under both treaty and customary international law, States must act with due diligence and do their utmost to mitigate climate change, including through action on fossil fuel production and consumption. The Court confirmed that the law of State responsibility applies if States fail to fulfil their obligations, and sketches a pathway for establishing causation of harm that would become relevant if reparation were sought.

This article examines the key dimensions of the Advisory Opinion, including the applicable law identified by the Court and its analysis of State responsibility, informing readers of the Court’s main findings and their consequences. It also puts forward a few reflections, including on the Advisory Opinion’s emphasis on international cooperation and finance flows, the Court’s views on sea-level rise and self-determination, the role of science in the Advisory Opinion and what the Court left for the future.

Provisional measures have increasingly played a key role in protecting individual and collective rights in the African human rights system. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Court) have exhibited a proactive stance in indicating provisional measures in cases relating to the protection of the right to life, social and economic rights, and political rights, including electoral participation. The far-reaching measures of the Court, however, along with the general proactivity of the Court in finding human rights violations, have sparked a backlash, leading Rwanda, Tanzania (where the seat of the Court is located), Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and, more recently, Tunisia to withdraw their declarations allowing individuals and non-governmental organisations to petition the Court directly.

This article analyses the role of provisional measures in the African human rights system and explores the implications of this proactive approach in the context of the ongoing crisis within the African Union. It argues that the Court should show resilience vis-à-vis State reactions, asserting its role as a human rights guarantor in the region. Providing more clarity and guidance to applicants requesting emergency protection, as well as making the measures as specific as possible, could be beneficial in this respect. This would allow petitioners to gain more confidence in their pursuit of the protection of this mechanism.

The common law tradition has always been sceptical of philosophy, prioritising the importance of practical experience in real world cases over abstract general ideas. This article attempts to demonstrate how the ideas of two philosophers—Fuller and Wittgenstein—help to explain the widespread use of the notion of purpose in real world case law. Fuller’s conception of law as the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules illuminates the common law’s respect for the agency of legal subjects, whether that be respecting parties’ purposes in making a contractual bargain or using purpose as a basis for limiting liability in tort. Similarly, Wittgenstein’s conception of language demonstrates the necessity of resort to purpose in interpretation, as the open-textured nature of words means that legal rules only become determinate when used in specific contexts for specific purposes. The article focuses primarily on the United Kingdom’s (UK) legal system, with its two tracks of the common law and parliamentary legislation, but also extends the argument to examples drawn from forms of supranational law to demonstrate that the analysis is capable of being generalised beyond the UK’s legal system.