Criminal Law Commons^™

The Conferred Jurisdiction Of The International Criminal Court, Leila Nadya Sadat

Notre Dame Law Review

After twenty years of operation, we know that the International Criminal Court (ICC) works in practice. But does it work in theory? A debate rages regarding the proper conceptualization of the Court’s jurisdiction. Some have argued that the ICC’s jurisdiction is little more than a delegation by states of a subset of their own criminal jurisdiction. They contend that when states ratify the Rome Statute, they transfer some of their own prescriptive or adjudicative criminal jurisdiction to the Court, meaning that the Court cannot do more than the state itself could have done. Moreover, they argue that these constraints are …

The Intenational Crimial Court (Icc) As A Mechanism For Global Justice And Rule Of Law, Paolo Davide Farah

Book Chapters

Throughout history, institutions have been the chosen platforms for governing and regulating society. However, in the twenty-first century, with unprecedented connectivity and interdependence, working toward multilateral solutions for global challenges, whether in climate change through the UNFCCC or in trade via the World Trade Organization, has become increasingly complex. This rise in complexity within the international landscape has not been met with proportional attention to cooperation, conflict resolution, and harmonizing human values.

It is relevant to highlight the intersection between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and broader questions within international humanitarian law, (IHL) its interconnections and intertwinement with International Criminal …

Justice For Venezuela: The Human Rights Violations That Are Isolating An Entire Country, Andrea Matos

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Can The International Criminal Court Succeed? An Analysis Of The Empirical Evidence Of Violence Prevention, Stuart Ford

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

Despite significant optimism about the future of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) during its early years, recently there has been growing criticism of it by both scholars and governments. As a result, there appears to be more doubt about the ICC’s ability to succeed now than at any other point in its history. So, are the critics correct? Is the ICC failing? No. This Article argues that, not only can the ICC succeed, there is strong evidence that it is already succeeding. It analyzes several recent empirical articles that have convincingly demonstrated that the ICC prevents serious violations of international …

From Timbuktu To The Hague And Beyond: The War Crime Of Intentionally Attacking Cultural Property, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This essay refracts the criminal conviction and reparations order of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Al Mahdi case into the much broader frame of increasingly heated public debates over the protection, removal, defacement, relocation, display and destruction of cultural heritage in all forms: monuments, artefacts, language instruction, art and literature. What might the work product of the ICC in the Al Mahdi proceedings -- and international criminal law more generally -- add, contribute or excise from these debates? This essay speculatively explores connections between the turn to penal law to protect cultural property and the transformative impulses that …

Measuring Norms And Normative Contestation: The Case Of International Criminal Law, Beth A. Simmons, Hyeran Jo

All Faculty Scholarship

One way to tell if an international norm is robust is to assess the breadth of its support from a wide variety of important actors. We argue that to assess norm robustness, we should look at the general beliefs, rhetorical support, and actions of both primary and secondary norm addressees (states and non-state actors) at various levels: international, regional, domestic and local. By way of example, we evaluate the robustness of international criminal law (ICL) norms by looking at the rhetoric and actions of a diverse set of international actors, including not only states and intergovernmental organizations but also ordinary …

The Failure Of International Law In Palestine, Svetlana Sumina, Steven Gilmore

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming

Rape And Sexual Violence: Questionable Inevitability And Moral Responsibility In Armed Conflict, Katherine W. Bogen

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

Wartime sexual violence is a critical human rights issue that usurps the autonomy of its victims as well as their physical and psychological safety. It occurs in both ethnic and non-ethnic wars, across geographic regions, against both men and women, and regardless of the “official” position of commanders, states, and armed groups on the use of rape as tactic of war. This problem is current, pervasive, and global in spite of the status of wartime sexual violence perpetration as a crime against humanity and the capacity of the international criminal court to indict offenders. Though some scholars have argued that …

The Right To No: The Crime Of Marital Rape, Women's Human Rights, And International Law, Melanie Randall, Vasanthi Venkatesh

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

More than half of the world’s countries do not explicitly criminalize sexual assault in marriage. While sexual assault in general is criminalized in these countries, sexual assault perpetrated by a spouse is entirely legal. The human rights violations inhere in acts of violence against women are now well recognized. Yet somehow marital rape is a particular form of gendered violence that has escaped both criminal law sanctions and human rights approbation in a great number of the world’s nations.

This silence in the law creates legal impunity for men who sexually assault or rape the women who are their wives …

Advantaging Aggressors: Justice & Deterrence In International Law, Paul H. Robinson, Adil Ahmad Haque

All Faculty Scholarship

Current international law imposes limitations on the use of force to defend against unlawful aggression that improperly advantage unlawful aggressors and disadvantage their victims. The Article gives examples of such rules, governing a variety of situations, showing how clearly unjust they can be. No domestic criminal law system would tolerate their use.

There are good practical reasons why international law should care that its rules are perceived as unjust. Given the lack of an effective international law enforcement mechanism, compliance depends to a large degree upon the moral authority with which international law speaks. Compliance is less likely when its …

The Domestic Influence Of International Criminal Tribunals: The International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia And The Creation Of The State Court Of Bosnia & Herzegovina, William W. Burke-White

All Faculty Scholarship

International criminal tribunals are often criticized for having minimal influence on the states over which they exercise jurisdiction. This article argues that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has had a far more positive impact on domestic governance in Bosnia & Herzegovina than previously assumed by both the academic and policy communities. The article develops a theoretical model to explain the impact of international criminal tribunals on domestic governance and tests that model against the ICTY¹s influence in Bosnia. More specifically, the article advances the claim that the nature of the tribunal¹s jurisdictional relationship with domestic judicial institutions …