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Full-Text Articles in Law
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 …
From Prosecutorial To Reparatory: A Valuable Post-Conflict Change Of Focus, Nancy A. Combs
From Prosecutorial To Reparatory: A Valuable Post-Conflict Change Of Focus, Nancy A. Combs
Michigan Journal of International Law
The ICC is well known in international legal circles. Indeed, everyone who knows anything about international law knows that the ICC is the acronym for the International Criminal Court, the body charged with prosecuting international crimes around the globe. Created in 2002, the ICC was intended to “put an end to impunity” for the perpetrators of international crimes” and to affirm “that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished.”1 Imagine, however, a world where the “ICC” instead was an acronym for the International Compensation Court. That is, what if the …
Inciting Genocide With Words, Richard A. Wilson
Inciting Genocide With Words, Richard A. Wilson
Michigan Journal of International Law
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, observers emphasized the role of media propaganda in inciting Rwandan Hutus to attack the Tutsi minority group, with one claiming that the primary tools of genocide were “the radio and the machete.” As a steady stream of commentators referred to “radio genocide” and “death by radio” and “the soundtrack to genocide,” a widespread consensus emerged that key responsibility for the genocide lay with the Rwandan media. Mathias Ruzindana, prosecution expert witness at the ICTR, supports this notion, writing, “In the case of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the effect of language was lethal . …
She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl
She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl
Mark A. Drumbl
In the nearly twenty years since 1994, the international community and the Rwandan government have pushed to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the genocide. Judicialization has occurred at multiple levels. Over ninety persons-those deemed most responsible-have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), an ad hoc institution established by the U.N. Security Council in November 1994. Approximately ten thousand individuals have been prosecuted in specialized chambers of national courts in Rwanda. According to the Rwandan government, nearly two million people have faced neo-traditional gacaca proceedings conducted by elected lay judges throughout the country. Gacaca proceedings concluded in …
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 …
Toward A Legal Theory On The Responsibility To Protect, Monica Hakimi
Toward A Legal Theory On The Responsibility To Protect, Monica Hakimi
Articles
Over the past several decades, the central focus of international law has shifted from protecting only sovereign states to protecting individuals. Still, the worst imaginable human rights violations—genocides, ethnic cleansings, crimes against humanity, and systemic war crimes—occur with alarming frequency. And the international response is often slow or ineffectual. The most recent development for addressing this problem is the “responsibility to protect,” an idea that has received so much attention that it now goes simply by R2P. Almost all heads of state have endorsed R2P. The U.N. Secretary General has made R2P a top priority and issued multiple reports on …
She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl
She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl
Michigan Journal of International Law
In the nearly twenty years since 1994, the international community and the Rwandan government have pushed to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the genocide. Judicialization has occurred at multiple levels. Over ninety persons-those deemed most responsible-have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), an ad hoc institution established by the U.N. Security Council in November 1994. Approximately ten thousand individuals have been prosecuted in specialized chambers of national courts in Rwanda. According to the Rwandan government, nearly two million people have faced neo-traditional gacaca proceedings conducted by elected lay judges throughout the country. Gacaca proceedings concluded in …
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 …
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 …
Rape At Rome: Feminist Interventions In The Criminalization Of Sex-Related Violence In Positive International Criminal Law, Janet Halley
Rape At Rome: Feminist Interventions In The Criminalization Of Sex-Related Violence In Positive International Criminal Law, Janet Halley
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article examines the work of organized feminism in the formation of new international criminal tribunals over the course of the 1990s. It focuses on the statutes establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the International Criminal Court (ICC). It offers a description of the evolving organizational style of feminists involved in the legislative processes leading to the establishment of these courts, and a description of their reform agenda read against the outcomes in each court-establishing statute. At each stage, the Article counts up the feminist victories and defeats, …
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.
Sexual Violence As Genocide: The Developing Law Of The International Criminal Tribunals And The International Criminal Court, Jonathan M.H. Short
Sexual Violence As Genocide: The Developing Law Of The International Criminal Tribunals And The International Criminal Court, Jonathan M.H. Short
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This note will explore the treatment of the two primary violent sexual acts, rape and forced pregnancy, in modern international criminal law; more specifically in its treatment as genocide. The woman as an individual is the primary sufferer of sexual violence during armed conflict, however sexual violence is a calculated means by which perpetrators seek to destroy an entire ethnic group. Sexual violence is both an attack against the woman and an attack against the ethnic group, and should be prosecuted as such. While crimes against individuals are best prosecuted as crimes against humanity or under domestic law, crimes committed …
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. …