Law Commons^™

Future-Proofing U.S. Laws For War Crimes Investigations In The Digital Era, Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Advances in information technology have irrevocably changed the nature of war crimes investigations. The pursuit of accountability for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community now invariably requires access to digital evidence. The global reach of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter means that much of that digital evidence is held by U.S. social media companies, and access to it is subject to the U.S. Stored Communications Act.

This is the first Article to look at the legal landscape facing international investigators seeking access to digital evidence regarding genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression. It …

Post-Conflict Reconciliation In Ukraine, Elena Baylis

Articles

Reconciliation mechanisms should be a core component of transitional justice in Ukraine. The nature of this conflict as a war justified by claims about history, identity, and legitimacy suggests that there will be a need for post-war reconciliation initiatives. Such reconciliation measures would be intended to enable Ukraine’s Russian, Ukrainian, and other communities to live together constructively within the same state. The goals of social reconciliation also converge with Ukraine’s long-term, political aims vis-à-vis both Russia and the European Union. This paper addresses three types of reconciliation measures that are important for post-conflict Ukraine. Instrumental mechanisms to engage post-conflict social …

The Weaponization Of Rape: Military Culture, Tactical Warfare, And Legal Justice, Claire Velte

International Relations Summer Fellows

The long-accepted narrative of wartime rape is one of inevitability, with sexual violence committed at the hands of soldiers during conflict being written off as an unavoidable side-effect of war. In reality, however, wartime rape can be systematically and tactically employed by military forces to terrorize the bodies of their enemies, often as an attempt to physically and psychologically destroy certain populations. The act itself, when employed tactically, is legally recognized as a weapon of war—and the rape of civilians by military forces was legally designated as a crime against humanity in 1993—yet rape continues to be utilized in conflict …

The Policy On Children Of The Icc Office Of The Prosecutor: Toward Greater Accountability For Crimes Against And Affecting Children, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

The Policy on Children published by the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor in 2016 represents a significant step toward accountability for harms to children in armed conflict and similar extreme violence. This article describes the process that led to the Policy and outlines the Policy’s contents. It then surveys relevant ICC practice and related developments, concluding that despite some salutary efforts, much remains to be done to recognize, prevent and punish the spectrum of conflicted-related crimes against or affecting children.

Documentation For Accountability, Paul Williams, Jessica Levy

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The cost of armed conflict is borne not only in the stark number of lives lost, but also in the grave atrocity crimes committed during these periods. Despite the legal protections set forth in the Geneva Conventions and other foundational documents of international humanitarian law, perpetrators continue to commit crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. Documenting these atrocity crimes has become a crucial step in efforts to secure justice for victims and survivors of these atrocities. To support the expanding field of human rights documentation, the international community must redouble its efforts to ensure that civil society actors engaged …

The Rohingya Genocide, Paul Williams, Todd F. Buchwald, Jenny Domino, Rebecca Hamilton, Michael P. Scharf, Meilena Sterio

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

October 1, 2019 Broadcast: 'The Rohingya Genocide', Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Internationalists: How A Radical Plan To Outlaw War Remade The World, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

Mary Ellen O'Connell researches and writes in the areas of international law and the use of force and international legal theory. She provides a thorough review of The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World, Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017), wherein the authors investigate the investigate the history, nature, and impact of the international legal prohibition on the use of force, focusing on the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

Assessing The International Criminal Court, Beth A. Simmons, Mitchell Radtke, Hyeran Jo

All Faculty Scholarship

One of the most important issues surrounding international courts is whether they can further the dual causes of peace and justice. None has been more ambitious in this regard than the International Criminal Court (ICC). And yet the ICC has been the object of a good deal of criticism. Some people claim it has been an expensive use of resources that might have been directed to other purposes. Others claim that its accomplishments are meager because it has managed to try and convict so few people. And many commentators and researchers claim that the Court faces an inherent tension between …

The Karadžić Genocide Conviction: Inferences, Intent, And The Necessity To Redefine Genocide, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article first discusses and analyzes the Genocide Convention and its strict definition of genocide and the "intent" requirement. It then focuses on the evolution of this definition in light of the recent Karadžić case. This Article demonstrates that in modern-day conflicts, the finding of genocidal intent may be an impossible task for the prosecution and that the ICTY Trial Chamber’s method of inferring intent based on knowledge and other indirect factors may be the only way that prosecutors will be able to obtain future genocide convictions. This Article then discusses a possible re-drafting and re-conceptualizing of the genocide definition …

State-Enabled Crimes, Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

International crimes are committed by individuals, but many – from genocide in Rwanda to torture at Abu Ghraib – would not have occurred without the integral role played by the State. This dual contribution, of individual and State, is intrinsic to the commission of what I term “State-Enabled Crimes.” Viewing international adjudication through the rubric of State-Enabled Crimes highlights a feature of the international judicial architecture that is typically taken for granted: its bifurcated structure. Notwithstanding the deep interrelationship between individual and State in the commission of State-Enabled Crimes, the international legal system adjudicates the responsibility of each under two …

Children, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This chapter, which appears in The Cambridge Companion to International Criminal Law (William A. Schabas ed. 2016), discusses how international criminal law instruments and institutions address crimes against and affecting children. It contrasts the absence of express attention in the post-World War II era with the multiple provisions pertaining to children in the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court. The chapter examines key judgments in that court and in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, as well as the ICC’s current, comprehensive approach to the effects that crimes within its jurisdiction have on children. The chapter concludes with a …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

In this section: • U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Law Facilitating Compensation for Victims of Iranian Terrorism • Russia Argues Enhanced Military Presence in Europe Violates NATO-Russia Agreement; United States Criticizes Russian Military Maneuvers over the Baltic Sea as Inconsistent with Bilateral Treaty Governing Incidents at Sea • U.S. Secretary of State Determines ISIL Is Responsible for Genocide • United States Blocks Reappointment of WTO Appellate Body Member • U.S. Department of Defense Releases Report of Investigation Finding That October 2015 Air Strike on Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, Was Not a War Crime • United States Expands Air …

Arendt On The Crime Of Crimes, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Genocide–-the intentional destruction of groups “as such”–-is sometimes called the “crime of crimes,” but explaining what makes it the crime of crimes is no easy task. Why are groups important over and above the individuals who make them up? Hannah Arendt tried to explain the uniqueness of genocide, but the claim of this paper is that she failed. The claim is simple, but the reasons cut deep.

Genocide, in Arendt’s view, “is an attack upon human diversity as such.” So far so good; but it is hard to square with Arendt’s highly individualistic conception of human diversity, which in her …

The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

This essay appears as the ninth chapter of The Rules, Practice, and Jurisprudence of International Courts and Tribunals (Chiara Giorgetti ed., Brill, 2012). It covers the origin, establishment, organization, jurisdiction, and procedures of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). It then explains and analyzes a selection of the ICTR’s significant contributions to international criminal jurisprudence, covering, in particular, the Akayesu; Kayishema & Ruzindana; Nahimana, Barayagwiza & Ngeze (“The Media Case”); and Baglishema cases. The issues therefore include, among others, specific intent in the definition of genocide, rape as a modality of genocide, jurisdiction to prosecute violations of Additional Protocol …

Katyn Forest Massacre: Of Genocide, State Lies, And Secrecy, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The Soviet secret police murdered thousands of Poles near the Katyn Forest, just outside the Russian city of Smolensk, in the early spring of 1940. The Soviets targeted members of the Polish intelligentsia-military officers, doctors, engineers, police officers, and teachers-which Stalin, the Soviet leader, sought to eradicate preventively. At the start of World War II, the Soviet Union viewed Poland as attractive territory, to be conquered and potentially annexed after the war. The Katyn massacre was not discovered until 1943, by the Germans, who instantly blamed the Soviets. The latter, however, blamed the Germans, and the Western Allies begrudgingly accepted …

Symposium 2008: The United Nations Genocide Convention: A 60th Anniversary Commemoration: Keynote Address, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Tribunal-Hopping With The Post-Conflict Justice Junkies, Elena Baylis

Articles

The field of post-conflict justice is characterized in no small part by international interventions into post-conflict settings. International interveners invest substantial resources toward the goals of post-conflict justice, including creating legal accountability for atrocities and rebuilding local and national justice systems that respect human rights and rule of law. The aims of post-conflict justice and the mechanisms by which the international community can contribute to post-conflict legal institutions and processes have been and continue to be studied intensively.

But while the institutions, processes, and goals of post-conflict justice have been carefully scrutinized, another aspect of international interventions into post-conflict justice …

Remarks On Intervention, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Why Sudan? Ambiguous Identities Forge Persistent Conflict, Laura Nyantung Beny

Articles

The following essay is excerpted from the prospectus for Perspectives on Genocide and Genocidal Violence in the Sudan, edited by Law School Assistant Professor Laura N. Beny, Sondra Hale of UCLA, and Lako Tongun of Claremont Colleges, California. The book is under advance contract for publication by the University of Michigan Press. Its 14 chapters, written by prominent historians, anthropologists, social scientists, political leaders, and others, “tell overlapping stories about the social constructions of race, gender, culture, and religious and political loyalties, each of which underlies the longstanding conflict” in Sudan, according to Beny, whose essay in the book is …

Calling Genocide By Its Rightful Name: Lemkin's Word, Darfur, And The Un Report, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When the United Nations commission investigating Darfur issued its report in January 2005, it concluded that the Darfur atrocities represented war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not genocide. This had the harmful effect of deflating efforts to mobilize political support to halt the Darfur atrocities. But the Commission's conclusion was based entirely on technicalities in the legal definitions of the international crimes, not on denial that extermination is going on in Darfur. In this paper, the author argues that the legal and popular meanings of genocide have diverged in harmful ways: where laymen understand that mass killings and rapes …

Competing Frameworks For Assessing Contemporary Holocaust-Era Claims, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

There are many angles from which to perceive the contemporary holocaust-era claims. In 1997, Time magazine quoted Elie Wiesel as saying that, [i]f all the money in all the Swiss banks were turned over, it would not bring back the life of one Jewish child. But the money is a symbol. It is part of the story. If you suppress any part of the story, it comes back later, with force and violence.

Wiesel touches on two perspectives: first, what has been described as litigating the holocaust, with all that that implies about the law's questionable capacity to adjudicate issues …

Holocaust Deniers Can't Be Ignored: History: As Victims And Witnesses Of World War Ii Die Off, Revisionist Views Of The Nazi Horrors Could Gain Broader Acceptance, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

On trial in an English courtroom, where British historian David Irving has sued American professor Deborah Lipstadt for defamation, is not only the scholars' reputations but history itself. Irving claims that he was libeled by Lipstadt's 1993 book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," in which she called him "one of the most dangerous of the `revisionists'" because, "familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda." But under British law, the burden of proof in defamation is squarely on the defendant, thus making it necessary for Lipstadt …

The Legality Of The Nato Bombing Operation In The Federal Republic Of Yugoslavia, Aaron Schwabach

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Our First Televised Genocide, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

It is absolutely appalling that we have come so casually to observe the carnage, so passively to view the starvation over breakfast papers or dinnertime newscasts, so helplessly to watch these totally bereft human beings trudging barefoot over treacherous terrain toward the middle of nowhere.

There are other questions as well, of course, not as easily answered. Where are all their voices now, those demonstrators who so vociferously opposed war, ostensibly out of an overweening reverence for life? Is the latter-day holocaust being systematically perpetrated in northern Iraq any less horrifying than a direct hit on a camouflaged bomb shelter …

The Kahan Report, Ariel Sharon And The Sabra-Shatilla Massacres In Lebanon: Responsibility Under International Law For Massacres Of Civilian Populations, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.