Criminal Law Commons^™

Toward A Situational Model For Regulating International Crimes, Andrew K. Woods

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The international criminal regime, as currently conceived, relies almost exclusively on the power of backward-looking criminal sanctions to deter future international crimes. This model reflects the dominant mid-century approach to crime control, which was essentially reactive. Since then, domestic criminal scholars and practitioners have developed and implemented new theories of crime control—theories notable for their promise of crime prevention through ex ante attention to community and environmental factors. Community policing crime prevention through environmental design, and related "situational" approaches to crime control have had a significant impact on the administration of domestic criminal law.

This Article evaluates the implications of …

Moral Judgments & International Crimes: The Disutility Of Desert, Andrew K. Woods

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The international criminal regime exhibits many retributive features, but scholars and practitioners rarely defend the regime in purely retributive terms—that is, by reference to the inherent value of punishing the guilty. Instead, they defend it on the consequentialist grounds that it produces the best policy outcomes, such as deterrence, conflict resolution, and reconciliation. These scholars and practitioners implicitly adopt a behavioral theory known as the "utility of desert," a theory about the usefulness of appealing to people's retributive intuitions. That theory has been critically examined in domestic criminal scholarship but practically ignored in international criminal law.

This Article fills this …

Balancing Lives: Individual Accountability And The Death Penalty As Punishment For Genocide (Lessons From Rwanda), Melynda J. Price

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The purpose of this Article is not to answer the question of whether the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for genocide. One could safely argue that there is an emerging norm in international law against the death penalty, but individual countries have maintained their right to use the death penalty and continue to do so in code and in practice. This Article, using Rwanda as a case study, evaluates the real outcomes of such discrepancies in punishment at the domestic and international level, and the ability of both approaches to bring justice to the victims of genocide. Both domestic …