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Fairness, Legitimacy, And Selection Decisions In International Criminal Law, Jonathan Hafetz

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The selection of situations and cases remains one of the most vexing challenges facing the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other international criminal tribunals. Since Nuremberg, international criminal law (ICL) has experienced significant progress in developing procedural safeguards designed to protect the fair trial rights of the accused. But it continues to lag in the fairness of its selection decisions as measured against the norm of equal application of law, whether in the disproportionate focus on certain regions (as with the ICC's focus on Africa), the application of criminal responsibility only to one side of a conflict, or the continued …

Defending Democracy: A New Understanding Of The Party-Banning Phenomenon, Gur Bligh

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Recent years have witnessed a growing tendency among established democracies to battle political extremism by banning extremist parties. This Article explores this phenomenon in its wide-ranging international manifestations. The Article aims to challenge the prevalent paradigm underlying the discussion of party banning and to introduce a new paradigm for conceptualizing the party-banning phenomenon in its current reincarnation. Traditionally, the discussion concerning party banning has been strongly shaped by the traumatic experience of Hitler's rise to power and the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Hence, it has focused upon parties that are overtly opposed to democracy, like communist or fascist parties. …

Porfiry's Proposition: Legitimacy And Terrorism, Thomas M. Franck, Scott C. Senecal

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Suppose that, in 1938, the Prague government of President Edvard Benes, foreseeing the inevitable dismemberment of Czechoslovakia after the Munich Pact, had infiltrated a trained death squad of German Jewish exiles across the German border, in civilian clothing, to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Suppose they had succeeded and had then fled to Holland.

How should international law govern this hypothetical event? Should it require Holland either to try the assassins for murder or to return them to Germany for trial? Or should it exculpate, even commend, the assassins for a job well done? Or should the law remain silent? Would the …

Recognition Of Rhodesia And Traditional International Law: Some Conceptual Problems, Isaak L. Dore

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The traditional theories of recognition do not properly maintain the essential distinction between state and government. The only proper way to maintain this distinction is by laying down verifiable criteria for statehood, and treating the recognition of governments as purely discretionary. A state must have come into existence before the question of recognition of a particular government can arise. International personality is a consequence of statehood, not of recognition; if a state can objectively come into existence, so can international personality, and the grant or withdrawal of recognition cannot affect that personality.

The degree of recognition conferred by the United …