Law Commons^™

Propaganda Warfare On The International Criminal Court, Sara L. Ochs

Michigan Journal of International Law

Propaganda warfare, while novel in nomenclature, is far from new in practice. In an era dominated by constant news, battles for public opinion complement physical attacks. In fact, “winning modern wars is as much dependent on carrying domestic and international public opinion as it is on defeating the enemy on the battlefield.” The fight for public opinion has become so valuable to military initiatives that the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual specifically recognizes propaganda directed towards “civilian or neutral audiences” as a “permissible means of war.”

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 …

The Possibility Of Prosecuting Corporations For Climate Crimes Before The International Criminal Court: All Roads Lead To The Rome Statute?, Donna Minha

Michigan Journal of International Law

Due to rapid developments in climate science, scientists are now able to quantifiably link significant greenhouse gas emissions caused by major oil and gas corporations to specific climate impacts. These scientific advances have been accompanied by the publication of documents and studies suggesting that the oil and gas industry allegedly had knowledge of climate change as early as sixty years ago, and yet it actively worked to promote climate change denial and to delay governmental regulation on this matter. Though climate-related litigation is proceeding against the industry in different jurisdictions, proceedings brought against oil and gas corporations mainly focus on …

Sovereign Immunity, The Au, And The Icc: Legitimacy Undermined, Christa-Gaye Kerr

Michigan Journal of International Law

This note examines how the International Criminal Court’s indictment of African leaders has led to a breakdown in the relationship between the Court and the African Union and offers solutions to repair this relationship. In particular, the ICC’s blanket rejection of sovereign immunity and its close relationship with the UNSC delegitimize the Court. As an organization that relies on the cooperation of states across the world, this is something the Court cannot afford. The ICC’s decade-long fight with the African Union over the disproportionate number of charges leveled against African nationals has weakened its stature with African states. This has …

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

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

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 …

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 …

Victim Participation At The International Criminal Court And The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: A Feminist Project, Susana Sacouto

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The question this Article poses is whether victim participation--one of the most recent developments in international criminal law--has increased the visibility of the actual lived experience of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in the context of war, mass violence, or repression. Under the Rome Statute, victims of the world's most serious crimes were given unprecedented rights to participate in proceedings before the Court. Nearly a decade later, a similar scheme was established to allow victims to participate as civil parties in the proceedings before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC or Extraordinary Chambers), a court created …

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 …

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 …

Deconstructing International Criminal Law, Kevin Jon Heller

Michigan Law Review

After nearly fifty years of post-Nuremberg hibernation, international criminal tribunals have returned to the world stage with a vengeance. The Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ("ICTY") in 1993 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ("ICTR") in 1994. Hybrid domestic-international tribunals have been established in Sierra Leone (2000), East Timor (2000), Kosovo (2000), Cambodia (2003), Bosnia (2005), and Lebanon (2007). And, of course, the international community's dream of a permanent tribunal was finally realized in 2002, when the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court ("ICC") entered into force. This unprecedented proliferation of international …

War Tales And War Trials, Patricia M. Wald

Michigan Law Review

In this foreword, I will compare my experiences as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the work of war crimes tribunals generally, with a few of the recurrent themes in epic tales of war. Books and trials strive to educate and to persuade their audiences of the barbarity of war and its antipathy to the most fundamental norms of a humane society.3 War crimes tribunals began with Nuremberg and have proliferated in the past fifteen years. These tribunals were established to try and to punish individuals for violations of international humanitarian law ("IHL")-the so-called …

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 …

Transnational Networks And International Criminal Justice, Jenia Iontcheva Turner

Michigan Law Review

The theory of transgovernmental networks describes how government officials make law and policy on issues of global concern by coordinating informally across borders, without legal or official sanction. Scholars have argued that this sort of coordination is useful in many different areas of cross-border regulation, including banking, antitrust, environmental protection, and securities law. One area to which the theory has not yet been applied is international criminal law. For a number of reasons, until recently, international criminal law had not generated the same transgovernmental networks that have emerged in other fields. With few exceptions, international criminal law had been enforced …

Pluralizing International Criminal Justice, Mark A. Drumbl

Michigan Law Review

From Nuremberg to The Hague scours the institutions of international criminal justice in order to examine their legitimacy and effectiveness. This collection of essays is edited by Philippe Sands, an eminent authority on public international law and professor at University College London. The five essays derive from an equal number of public lectures held in London between April and June 2002. The essays - concise and in places informal - carefully avoid legalese and arcania. Taken together, they cover an impressive spectrum of issues. Read individually, however, each essay is ordered around one or two well-tailored themes, thereby ensuring analytic …

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 Slavery And The International Criminal Court: Advancing International Law, Valerie Oosterveld

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article explores the advancement of the international crime of sexual slavery, from its initial inclusion in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court through further development in the delineation of the ICC's Elements of Crime document. This Article begins with a detailed exploration of the negotiation process that led to the inclusion of the crime of sexual slavery in the Rome Statute. The first Section describes the decision to include both sexual slavery and enforced prostitution as crimes, as well as the debate on listing sexual slavery as a crime separate from that of enslavement. Next, the Section …

Continuing Crimes In The Rome Statute, Alan Nissel

Michigan Journal of International Law

One of the most ambitious goals of the International Criminal Court is to balance the ideal of ending impunity with the legalistic protection of the accused from the arbitrary application of law. Accordingly, the main task of this Article will be to determine when continuing crimes will fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court according to the established primary and secondary sources of international law-i.e., within the rule of law.

Some Troubling Elements In The Treaty Language Of The Rome Statute Of The International Criminal Court, Catherine R. Blanchet

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note will examine problems that arise from the language of the Rome Statute itself. Part II will examine the potential strategic uses of the Rome Statute's jurisdictional aspects. It will also examine how the fairness concerns raised by this potential usage are exacerbated when the potential State abuser is a permanent member of the Security Council. Part III will look at the language of the Rome Statute's definition of crimes against humanity. It will also examine the various and varying interpretations of this language by the scholars and commentators who have examined the issue.

The Principle Of Complementarity: A New Machinery To Implement International Criminal Law, Mohamed M. El Zeidy

Michigan Journal of International Law

According to the doctrine of State sovereignty each State has the right to exercise its jurisdiction over crimes committed in its territory-known as the territoriality principle. Even if the crimes committed are of a type that affects the international community as a whole, States are often hesitant to have their own nationals tried by an international judicial organ. History demonstrates that States rarely waived this right, which is inherent to their sovereignties, and did not rely exclusively on international justice. Rather they always preferred to exercise their jurisdiction exclusively, and only occasionally, when coerced by special circumstances, have they accepted …

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 …