Background of the case and history of the legal proceedings In its application of 23 December 2008 Germany brought a complaint before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), claiming that in recent years, Italian judicial bodies repeatedly disregarded its jurisdictional immunity as a sovereign State. According to Germany, the critical stage of that development was reached by the judgment of the Corte di Cassazione of 11 March 2004 in the Ferrini case, where this court declared that Italy held jurisdiction with regard to a claim (proceedings initiated in 1998) brought by a person who during World War II had been…