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Hungary joined the Axis powers during World War II, effectively bringing the Hungarian police and the Gendarmerie, a paramilitary police unit, under the control and direction of the German SS. Imre Finta, originally a Hungarian national, was an officer and later a captain in the Hungarian Gendarmerie. In 1944, he was dispatched to Szeged to implement the Baky Order, a decree introduced by the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior calling for the isolation, exporpriation, ghettoization, concentration, entrainment and eventual deportation of all Hungarian Jews. In connection with this order, Finta was allegedly responsible for the detention of 8 617 Hungarian Jews in brickyard, forcibly stripping them of their valuables and deporting them to concentration camps under appalling conditions.

Under new Canadian war crimes legislation, Finta (a Canadian national and resident since 1956) was brought before the Toronto court to stand trial for eight counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was acquitted by a jury and this decision was upheld by a majority of the Court of Appeal of Ontario. The present decision was rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada and constituted the final appeal in the case against Finta. By a narrow margin of 4:3, the appeal was dismissed, as Finta did not possess the necessary mens rea for war crimes and crimes against humanity and the Baky Order, on which he relied, did not appear as manifestly unlawful at the time of its enactment.

We often associate genocide with the act of killing members of a specific group, of which there have been many devastating examples throughout history. However, according to the Genocide Convention, other acts can also be regarded as genocide, if they are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, specific groups. In this case, the plaintiff held that building a bridge to Hindmarsh in South Australia would impede on the culture and way-of-life of the Ngarrindjeri in such a dramatic way that it would lead to the destruction of this group. However, at that point, genocide was not a crime under Australian national law. The plaintiff therefore invoked legislation from the UK, arguing that application of this legislation was possible because of the fact that the UK preceded the current Commonwealth of Australia in governing the Australian continent and its adjacent islands. The judge did not accept this argument and reiterated that even when international law prohibits genocide, someone can only be found guilty of genocide if national legislation explicitly prohibits genocide. The claim was denied.

In 2002, with the adoption of the International Criminal Court Act 2002, genocide became a crime under Australian law.

In June 1944, German occupation forces in Greece massacred more than 300 inhabitants of the village of Distomo and burnt the village to the ground, as reprisal for a partisan attack on German troops. In 1995, proceedings against Germany were instituted before the Greek courts, by over 250 relatives of the victims of the massacre, claiming compensation for loss of life and property. The Court of Livadia, Greece, held Germany liable and ordered it to pay compensation to the claimants. Germany appealed to the Greek Supreme Court, on the ground that it was immune from the jurisdiction of the Greek courts, on the basis of state immunity.

The Greek Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and rejected Germany’s claim of jurisdictional immunity. The Court denied German immunity applying Article 11 of the European Convention on State Immunity, considered to correspond to customary international law. Moreover, the Court held that violation of peremptory norms would have the legal effect of implicitly waiving the jurisdictional immunity. It reasoned that torts in breach of rules of peremptory international law cannot be claimed to be acts jure imperii, concluding that Germany, by breaching jus cogens, had implicitly waived its immunity.

The complaint against Radovan Karadžić was filed by victims and survivors of the crimes committed in Bosnia during the Bosnian War in 1992-1995. They requested compensation for the suffering they have experienced. The crimes alleged include, but are not limited to rape, murder, beatings, and emotional distress.  

On 4 October 2000, the District Court ordered Radovan Karadžić to pay $4.5 billion in damages to the victims and survivors.

Between 1931 and 1945, some 200,000 women were forced into sexual slaverty by the Japenese Army. These women, referred to as “comfort women” were recruited through forcible abductions, deception and coercion. Once captured, they were taken by the Japanese military to “comfort stations”, that is, facilities seized or built by the military near the front lines for express purpose of housing these women. Once there, the women would be repeatedly raped, tortured, beaten, mutilated and sometimes murdered. They were denied proper medical attention, shelter and nutrition.

The present lawsuit was brought by fifteen former “comfort women” against Japan on the basis of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). The United States District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the action on the grounds that Japan enjoyed immunity from proceedings as a sovereign State and the action did not fall within any of the exceptions to immunity enumerated in the FSIA. On appeal, the present decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the decision of the District Court.