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Increasing Case Traffic: Expanding The International Criminal Court's Focus On Human Trafficking Cases, Nadia Alhadi

Michigan Journal of International Law

Human trafficking falls within the jurisdictional competence of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) as one of the article 7 crimes against humanity, whether committed in an atmosphere of conflict or in times of relative peace. Despite the ICC’s jurisdiction, as well as the globally pervasive nature of peacetime trafficking in particular, the ICC has not yet heard a human trafficking case.

Accountability at the international level, however, is crucial, and the ICC’s oversight has the potential to fill gaps in the current anti-trafficking regime. This note explores this potential, and then examines whether the text of the Rome Statute or …

Fixing The Problem Of Incompetent Defense Counsel Before The International Criminal Court, Matthew Catallo

Michigan Journal of International Law

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth-century, defense counsel arguing before international criminal tribunals provided notoriously ineffective assistance. This note examines whether defense counsel similarly fail to provide competent assistance at the International Criminal Court––and if they do so for similar reasons. In examining the ICC’s procedural and regulatory framework, this note highlights the systemic inequities at the Court that favor the prosecution and devalue the defense, thereby hindering the acquisition of competent defense counsel and promoting the retention of incompetent defense counsel.

To address these iniquities, this note promotes various administrative reforms, all of which could be implemented without …

Reliability Of Expert Evidence In International Disputes, Matthew W. Swinehart

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this article traces the historical trends in the use of expert evidence in international disputes, from the scattered reliance on experts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the ubiquity of experts in modern disputes. With that perspective, Part II examines how decision makers have attempted to ensure reliability of the expert evidence that is flooding the evidentiary records of international disputes, while Part III outlines the many problems that still remain. Finally, Part IV proposes a non-exhaustive and nonbinding checklist of questions for analyzing the reliability of any type of expert evidence.

Experiments In International Criminal Justice: Lessons From The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, John D. Ciorciari, Anne Heindel

Michigan Journal of International Law

Important experiments in international criminal justice have been taking place at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC or Court), a tribunal created by the United Nations and Cambodian Government to adjudicate some of the most egregious crimes of the Pol Pot era.2 The tribunal opened its doors in 2006, and although its work continues, its first seven years of operations provide an opportunity to evaluate its performance and judge the extent to which legal and institutional experiments at the ECCC have been successful to date. This Article will show that, in general, the ECCC’s most unique and …

Technology, Ethics, And Access To Justice: Should An Alogrithm Be Deciding Your Case?, Anjanette H. Raymond, Scott J. Shackelford

Michigan Journal of International Law

At a time of U.S. budget cuts, popularly known as the “sequester,” court systems across the nation are facing financial shortfalls. Small claims courts are no exception. Among the worst hit states is California, which is suffering staffing cutbacks that result in long delays prompting consideration of the old maxim, “justice delayed is justice denied.” Similar problems, albeit on a larger scale, are evident in other nations including India where the Law Commission has argued that the millions of pending cases combined with the lagging uptake of technological best practices has impeded judicial productivity, leading to “disappointment and dissatisfaction among …

Courts Of Appeal And Colonialism In The British Caribbean: A Case For The Caribbean Court Of Justice, Ezekiel Rediker

Michigan Journal of International Law

In recent years, a public debate on law and the colonial legacy has engaged people of all walks of life in the English Speaking Caribbean (ESC), from judges and politicians to young people in the streets. Throughout the ESC, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC)—based in London and composed of British jurists—has been the highest court of appeal since the colonial era. In the past decade, however, Caribbean governments have sought greater control over their legal systems. In 2005, they created the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to supplant the British Privy Council as the Supreme Court for …

Legitimizing International Criminal Justice: The Importance Of Process Control, Nancy Amoury Combs

Michigan Journal of International Law

The last two decades have witnessed an astounding transformation of the international legal landscape as the international community has created a series of courts and tribunals to prosecute those accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. As a consequence of this international institution building, prosecutions are currently underway for crimes committed across the globe: in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Cambodia, among other places. These international criminal tribunals and particularly the first modern tribunal- the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)-have undergone two significant evolutions. One of these …

Choosing To Prosecute: Expressive Selection At The International Criminal Court, Margaret M. Deguzman

Michigan Journal of International Law

The International Criminal Court (ICC), an institution in its infancy, has had occasion to make only a relatively small number of decisions about which defendants and which crimes to prosecute. But virtually every choice it has made has been attacked: the first defendant, Thomas Lubanga, was not senior enough and the crimes with which he was charged-war crimes involving the use of child soldiers-were not serious enough; the Court should have investigated British soldiers for war crimes committed in Iraq; the ICC should not be prosecuting only rebel perpetrators in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo; the Court's focus …

Special Court For Sierra Leone: Achieving Justice?, Charles Chernor Jalloh

Michigan Journal of International Law

The creation of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL or the Court) in early 2002 generated high expectations within the international community. The SCSL was generally deemed to herald a new model or benchmark for the assessment of future ad hoc international criminal courts. As the Court completes the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor in The Hague-its last-nine years later, this Article offers an early and broad assessment of whether it has fulfilled its promise. More specifically, this Article examines whether the SCSL has achieved, or more accurately-because its trials are still ongoing-whether it is achieving justice. …

Designing Bespoke Transitional Justice: A Pluralist Process Approach, Jaya Ramji-Nogales

Michigan Journal of International Law

Although many scholars agree that contemporary transitional justice mechanisms are flawed, a comprehensive and unified alternative approach to accountability for mass violence has yet to be propounded. Like many international lawyers, transitional justice theorists have focused their assessment efforts on the successes and failures of established institutions. This Article argues that before we can measure whether transitional justice is working, we must begin with a theory of what it is trying to achieve. Once we have a coherent theory, we must use it ex ante, to design effective transitional justice mechanisms, not just to assess their effectiveness ex post. Drawing …

The Victims Of Victim Participation In International Criminal Proceedings, Charles P. Trumbull Iv

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I discusses the emerging norms regarding victims' rights in international law and the factors that influenced the victim participation scheme in the Rome Statute. Section A focuses on the victims' rights movement in domestic and international law; Section B examines the case law on victim participation from several treaty-based international human rights tribunals; and Section C explains how criticisms of the ICTY and the ICTR resulted in extensive rights for victims in the ICC. Next, Part II explains the statutory framework that governs the victims' role in ICC proceedings. It then discusses the emerging …

Sanchez-Llamas V. Oregon And Article 36 Of The Vienna Convention On Consular Relations: The Supreme Court, The Right To Consul, And Remediation, Mark J. Kadish, Charles C. Olson

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article analyzes the Sanchez-Llamas decision and attempts to ascertain its impact on future Article 36 litigation.

Judicial Dialogue For Legal Multiculturalism, Charles H. Koch Jr.

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article asserts that judicial exchange rather than dominance has inherent advantages as a technique for evolving a global legal culture. For insight into the global task, the Article looks first at an internecine struggle within the continental system. For further background, it describes how the U.S. Supreme Court has accommodated deviations from the basic legal model in U.S. administrative law as well as other internal U.S. legal systems. The supranational tribunals in the European setting and U.S. Supreme Court have shown the capacity to engage in dialogues over diverse legal philosophies. These experiences demonstrate the advantages of a mix …

The Battle To Establish An Adversarial Trial System In Italy, William T. Pizzi, Mariangela Montagna

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article is intended to bring the U.S. legal community up to date on the attempt in Italy to put in place a more accusatorial trial system. The Article is divided into three sections. Section I describes the central provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure that was adopted in 1988. It shows that a close look at the Italian system reveals that it was never intended to be an exact model of either the U.S. or English trial systems, because it always contained central features that are found in civil law systems on the continent. Rather, the changes in …

Compliance With Icj Provisional Measure And The Meaning Of Review And Reconsideration Under The Vienna Convention On Consular Relations: Avena And Other Mexican Nationals (Mex. V. U.S.), Linda E. Carter

Michigan Journal of International Law

Many aspects of the Avena case could lead to significant developments, there are two that will be addressed in this essay. The first issue has an immediate impact on the pending executions. What must the United States do to comply with the provisional measures order? What are "all measures necessary"? The second issue will have an impact in later litigation in the cases of the fifty-two Mexican defendants named in Avena and on other future defendants. What must the United States do to provide "review and reconsideration of the conviction and sentence by taking account of the violation of the …

Pictures At A Global Exhibition, Noah Leavitt

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of We are the Poors by Ashwin Desai and In America's Court: How a Civil Lawyer Who Likes to Settle Stumbled Into a Criminal Trial by Thomas Geoghegan

Prosecuting Human Rights Violations In Europe And America: How Legal System Structure Affects Compliance With International Obligations, Micah S. Myers

Michigan Journal of International Law

Will states really live up to these obligations? Are some states, and some legal systems, better equipped to do so than others? After all, it is one thing to commit to prosecuting horrendous offenses, or to recognize that there is an obligation under customary international law to do so, yet it is quite another to actually prosecute the perpetrators of such an offense; this is particularly the case when the government has a strong desire not to prosecute, because the accused are members of the government, because they are strong supporters of it, because they are foreign allies of the …

A Community Of Courts: Toward A System Of International Criminal Law Enforcement, William W. Burke-White

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article argues that, for political reasons, the future of international criminal law enforcement will largely be at the domestic level. It anticipates the emergence of a community of courts-domestic, semi-internationalized, and supranational. A decentralized system of international criminal law enforcement may give pause for concern: How can such a system be regulated? How can uniformity and effectiveness be assured? It is the claim of this Article that, in a world in which information is power, the relationships between these courts-the exchange of information, ideas, and personnel-brings order and regularity to the system. These interdependent relationships are defined by the …

The Post-Conflict Transitional Administration Of Kosovo And The Lessons-Learned In Efforts To Establish A Judiciary And Rule Of Law, Wendy S. Betts, Scott N. Carlson, Gregory Grisvold

Michigan Journal of International Law

The study of post-conflict Kosovo presents an important opportunity to distill lessons that can provide guidance for future post-conflict, transitional administrations. The lessons-learned from an analysis of any post-conflict setting are many and varied. The goal of this short paper is limited to the identification of key lessons-learned in the effort to reestablish the judiciary and rule of law in post-conflict Kosovo. Even within this limited setting, this paper is not intended to provide exhaustive coverage of the issue. Rather, it is intended to provide the reader with basic information and central themes that are essential to a discussion of …

The Statute Of The International Criminal Court And Third States, Gennady M. Danilenko

Michigan Journal of International Law

This paper examines the principal legal and political effects of the Rome Statute on non-parties. In particular, it explores the significance of the creation of a new powerful international institution for all members of the international community. It discusses the jurisdictional reach of the ICC which will inevitably affect all States. This paper also analyzes possible application of some provisions of the Rome Statute to non-States Parties in so far as these may reflect or generate customary international law. It suggests that despite the traditional principle of treaty law, according to which treaties do not bind Third States, the Rome …

Grotius Repudiated: The American Objections To The International Criminal Court And The Commitment To International Law, Marcell David

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article analyzes the American objections to the Statute. Part I describes the historical precedents for a permanent international criminal court and the drafting process undertaken. Part I concludes with a summary of the sections of the Statute which are implicated by the American objections. These statutory sections include the Statute's definitions of crimes, the role of the Prosecutor, the Court's anticipated relationship with the U.N. Security Council, and the Court's anticipated jurisdiction over states not party to the Statute. Part II selects three recent or current instances where the United States has used armed force, and analyzes the claims …

Egyptian Civil Justice Process Modernization: A Functional And Systemic Approach, Hiram E. Chodosh, Stephen A. Mayo, Fathi Naguib, Ali El Sadek

Michigan Journal of International Law

To provide helpful assistance to other nations currently in pursuit of civil process reform, this Article introduces a model of civil justice modernization developed through a functional and systemic approach. Addressing the common weaknesses of many other reform efforts, this approach is first motivated by the conviction that process modernization is a necessary component of effective substantive legal reform. Second, in its critical assessment of the problems and its creative recommendations for reform, this Article integrates the design of procedural, institutional, and professional development measures, without requiring large investments of unavailable financial resources. Third, the Article presents a long-term and …

A Functional Approach To "General Principles Of International Law", M. Cherif Bassiouni

Michigan Journal of International Law

"General Principles of International Law" are among the sources of national and international law' which have long been recognized and applied in disputes between States.2 They were embodied in the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice ["PCIJ"], article 38 (I)(3), and in the Statute of the International Court of Justice ["ICJ"], article 38 (1)(c), under the terms "general principles of law recognized by civilized nations." As discussed below, both the PCIJ and ICJ have relied on this source.

The Right To Bail In United States Extradition Proceedings, Carl A. Valenstein

Michigan Journal of International Law

This note examines the judicial rationale for denying bail in extradition proceedings except in special circumstances. The author maintains that the courts apply the special circumstances rule inconsistently. Moreover, a better balance should be struck between the interests of the accused and the interests of the United States Government. This can be accomplished by granting the accused in an extradition proceeding the same right to bail before a final order granting extradition as exists under the federal bail statute.

Protecting The Rights Of The Requested Person In Extradition Proceedings: An Argument For A Humanitarian Exception, Leslie Anderson

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article will first define the types of post-extradition treatment which requested persons have raised as requiring judicial attention. It will next survey judicial responses to these claims and then consider the scope of executive review. The article concludes that the courts have exaggerated the range of executive discretion to deny extradition. As extradition currently operates in the United States, there is the serious possibility that a bona fide claim of unfair treatment would not receive adequate consideration by either the judicial or executive branch.