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Criminal Law Commons

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Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Criminal Law

Enhancing The Status Of Non-State Actors Through A Global War On Terror?, Mary Ellen O'Connell Nov 2013

Enhancing The Status Of Non-State Actors Through A Global War On Terror?, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Mary Ellen O'Connell

Soon after September 11, President Bush declared a global war on terrorism and members of terrorist groups "combatants." These declarations are not only generally inconsistent with international law; they also reverse the trend regarding the legal status of international non-state actors. For decades, law-abiding non-state actors, such as international humanitarian aid organizations, enjoyed ever-expanding rights on the international plane. Professor Schachter observed how this trend came at the expense of the nation-state. He also predicted, however, that the nation-state would not fade away any time soon. And, by the late Twentieth Century, the trend toward enhanced status was noticeably slowing. …


Pretrial And Preventive Detention Of Suspected Terrorists: Options And Constraints Under International Law, Douglass Cassel Nov 2013

Pretrial And Preventive Detention Of Suspected Terrorists: Options And Constraints Under International Law, Douglass Cassel

Douglass Cassel

No abstract provided.


Accountability For System Criminality, Mark A. Drumbl Jan 2013

Accountability For System Criminality, Mark A. Drumbl

Mark A. Drumbl

Not available.


'Lesser Evils' In The War On Terrorism, Mark A. Drumbl Jan 2013

'Lesser Evils' In The War On Terrorism, Mark A. Drumbl

Mark A. Drumbl

No abstract provided.


The Expressive Value Of Prosecuting And Punishing Terrorists: Hamdan, The Geneva Conventions, And International Criminal Law, Mark A. Drumbl Jan 2013

The Expressive Value Of Prosecuting And Punishing Terrorists: Hamdan, The Geneva Conventions, And International Criminal Law, Mark A. Drumbl

Mark A. Drumbl

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the military commissions that had been proposed by the Executive to prosecute a small number of detainees captured in the 'war on terror' could not proceed. In response to the Hamdan decision, Congress enacted a new military commission structure in the 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA), which President Bush signed on October 17, 2006. The MCA establishes military commissions for aliens classified as unlawful enemy combatants. It lists the crimes chargeable by such commissions. The MCA also amends domestic legislation - for example, the War Crimes Act - initially …


Victimhood In Our Neighborhood: Terrorist Crime, Taliban Guilt, And The Asymmetries Of The International Legal Order, Mark A. Drumbl Jan 2013

Victimhood In Our Neighborhood: Terrorist Crime, Taliban Guilt, And The Asymmetries Of The International Legal Order, Mark A. Drumbl

Mark A. Drumbl

This Article posits that the September 11 attacks constitute nonisolated warlike attacks undertaken against a sovereign state by individuals from other states operating through a non-state actor with some command and political structure. This means that the attacks contain elements common to both armed attacks and criminal attacks. The international community largely has characterized the attacks as armed attacks. This characterization evokes a legal basis for the use of force initiated by the United States and United Kingdom against Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. Notwithstanding the successes of the military campaign and the need for containment of terrorist activity, this …


Targeting And The Concept Of Intent, Jens David Ohlin Jan 2013

Targeting And The Concept Of Intent, Jens David Ohlin

Michigan Journal of International Law

International law generally prohibits military forces from intentionally targeting civilians; this is the principle of distinction. In contrast, unintended collateral damage is permissible unless the anticipated civilian deaths outweigh the expected military advantage of the strike; this is the principle of proportionality. These cardinal targeting rules of international humanitarian law are generally assumed by military lawyers to be relatively well-settled. However, recent international tribunals applying this law in a string of little-noticed decisions have completely upended this understanding. Armed with criminal law principles from their own domestic systems — often civil law jurisdictions — prosecutors, judges and even scholars have …