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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Problem Of Purpose In International Criminal Law, Patrick J. Keenan
The Problem Of Purpose In International Criminal Law, Patrick J. Keenan
Michigan Journal of International Law
Keenan addresses the problem of purposes in this Article, with two principal objectives. The first is to sort through the competing theories to identify the core purposes of international criminal law. The second is to show how those purposes are or can be put into effect in actual cases. These questions are important because the purposes for which the law is deployed significantly influence how it is deployed. Prosecutors bring different kinds of cases and argue different theories based at least in part on what they hope to achieve. For example, in the domestic context, prosecutors might choose to prioritize …
After Atrocity: Optimizing Un Action Toward Accountability For Human Rights Abuses, Steven R. Ratner
After Atrocity: Optimizing Un Action Toward Accountability For Human Rights Abuses, Steven R. Ratner
Michigan Journal of International Law
It is a great honor for me to be here to deliver the John Humphrey Lecture. Humphrey led one of those lives within the UN that shaped what the organization has become today—as one of the first generation of UN civil servants, he was to human rights what Ralph Bunche was to peacekeeping, or Brian Urquhart to UN mediation. To read his diaries, so beautifully edited by John Hobbins, is to see a world that has in many ways vanished, a nearly entirely male club, mostly of Westerners, that hammered out new treaties and mechanisms over fine wine and cigars …
Experiments In International Criminal Justice: Lessons From The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, John D. Ciorciari, Anne Heindel
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 …
Principled Exclusion: A Revised Approach To Article1(F)(A) Of The Refugee Convention, Jennifer Bond
Principled Exclusion: A Revised Approach To Article1(F)(A) Of The Refugee Convention, Jennifer Bond
Michigan Journal of International Law
The focus of this contribution is Article 1(F)(a), a section of the exclusion clause that has increased in both use and profile in recent years. Article 1(F)(a) applies to individuals who may be implicated in crimes against peace (more commonly known today as crimes of aggression), war crimes, or crimes against humanity as such crimes are defined in relevant international instruments. Where a decision maker finds that “there are serious reasons for considering that” an asylum seeker has committed one of these acts, the remainder of the Refugee Convention does not apply, and any protections to which the claimant would …
The Icc Prosecutor V. President Medema: Simulated Proceedings Before The International Criminal Court , Pieter H. F. Bekker, David Stoelting
The Icc Prosecutor V. President Medema: Simulated Proceedings Before The International Criminal Court , Pieter H. F. Bekker, David Stoelting
Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal
On July 18, 2000, as part of the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, an all star cast of American and English lawyers gathered in the Common Room of the Law Society of England and Wales in London to simulate oral argument before the International Criminal Court ("ICC"). The fictitious proceedings involved a head of state, President Luis Medema, charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The prosecutors and defense counsel engaged in lively oral argument before the Trial Chamber in the context of three critical issues: (1) jurisdiction of the ICC over citizens of non-state parties; …
Palestine Is A State: A Horse With Black And White Stripes Is A Zebra, John Quigley
Palestine Is A State: A Horse With Black And White Stripes Is A Zebra, John Quigley
Michigan Journal of International Law
The article Israel, Palestine, and the ICC by Daniel Benoliel and Ronen Perry, published in Volume 32 of the Michigan Journal of International Law, makes a case against a possible assertion of jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court over war crimes that may have been committed by persons on either side of the 2008-2009 war in Gaza. Benoliel and Perry argue that the International Criminal Court is powerless to investigate or to prosecute such war crimes, despite the strong possibility that such crimes were committed. Concern over such possible crimes has been widely expressed at the international level, including a …
Special Court For Sierra Leone: Achieving Justice?, Charles Chernor Jalloh
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. …
Liberal Legal Norms Meet Collective Criminality, John D. Ciorciari
Liberal Legal Norms Meet Collective Criminality, John D. Ciorciari
Michigan Law Review
International criminal law ("ICL") tends to focus on the same question asked by the Cambodian survivor above: who was ultimately most responsible? Focusing on the culpability of senior leaders has powerful appeal. It resonates with a natural human tendency to personify misdeeds and identify a primary locus for moral blame. It also serves political ends by putting a face on mass crimes, decapitating the old regime, and leaving room for reconciliation at lower levels. But what happens when smoking guns do not point clearly toward high-ranking officials? And how can the law address the fact that most atrocities are committed …
An Emerging Norm - Determining The Meaning And Legal Status Of The Responsibility To Protect, Jonah Eaton
An Emerging Norm - Determining The Meaning And Legal Status Of The Responsibility To Protect, Jonah Eaton
Michigan Journal of International Law
The responsibility to protect, from its recent nativity in the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), is the latest round in an old debate pitting the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of states against allowing such intervention to prevent gross and systematic violations of human rights. Advocates for the concept see it as an important new commitment by the international community, injecting new meaning into the tragically threadbare promise to never again allow mass atrocities to occur unchallenged. ICISS offered the concept of responsibility to protect as a new way to confront …
Designing Bespoke Transitional Justice: A Pluralist Process Approach, Jaya Ramji-Nogales
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 …
Israel, Palestine, And The Icc, Daniel Benoliel, Ronen Perry
Israel, Palestine, And The Icc, Daniel Benoliel, Ronen Perry
Michigan Journal of International Law
In the wake of the Israel-Gaza 2008-09 armed conflict and recently commenced process at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Court will soon face a major challenge with the potential to determine its degree of judicial independence and overall legitimacy. It may need to decide whether a Palestinian state exists, either for the purposes of the Court itself, or perhaps even in general. The ICC, which currently has 113 member states, has not yet recognized Palestine as a sovereign state or as a member. Moreover, although the ICC potentially has the authority to investigate crimes which fall into its subject-matter …
From Indifference To Engagement: Bystanders And International Criminal Justice, Laurel E. Fletcher
From Indifference To Engagement: Bystanders And International Criminal Justice, Laurel E. Fletcher
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article contributes to the scholarship on transitional justice by examining how the legal architecture and operation of international criminal law constricts bystanders as subjects of jurisprudence, considering the effects of this limitation on the ability of international tribunals to promote their social and political goals, and proposing institutional reforms needed to address this limitation.
Rush To Closure: Lessons Of The Tadić Judgment, Jose E. Alvarez
Rush To Closure: Lessons Of The Tadić Judgment, Jose E. Alvarez
Michigan Law Review
In 1993 and 1994, following allegations of mass atrocities, including systematic killings, rapes, and other horrific forms of violence in Rwanda and the territories of the former Yugoslavia, two ad hoc international war crimes tribunals were established to prosecute individuals for grave violations of international humanitarian law, including genocide. As might be expected, advocates for the creation of these entities - the first international courts to prosecute individuals under international law since the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II - aspired to grand goals inspired by, but extending far beyond, the pedestrian aims of ordinary criminal prosecutions. …