Criminal Law Commons^™

Books Received, Georgia Journal Of International And Comparative Law

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Accountability For “Crimes Against The Laws Of Humanity In Boxer China: The Experiment With International Justice At Paoting-Fu, Benjamin E. Brockman-Hawe

Benjamin E. Brockman-Hawe

This paper covers a significant but generally unknown and understudied caesure in the development of international criminal law occurred during the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-Western and anti‑Christian peasant insurgency mostly located in Northeast China. During the early stages of the Chinese intervention, at a time when the relief force was still bogged down in Beijing, approximately seventy Christians were gruesomely murdered in Paoting-fu. Securing and “punishing” the city became a priority for Western military forces, who began the necessary short march southward once Beijing’s Legation Quarter was cleared of Boxers. The Poating-fu operation could have taken the form of the …

Dealing With Dangerous Women: Sexual Assault Under Cover Of National Security Laws In India, Surabhi Chopra Prof.

Surabhi Chopra Prof.

DEALING WITH DANGEROUS WOMEN: SEXUAL ASSAULT UNDER COVER OF NATIONAL SECURITY LAWS IN INDIA

This article examines violence against women suspected of being security threats in India’s internal conflict zones, one of the very few scholarly works to do so.

I focus on two cases in particular. In 2004, Thangjam Manorama was arrested by paramilitaries on suspicion of belonging to a violent separatist group, and found raped and murdered several hours later. I look at her family’s attempts to hold the armed forces accountable for her death. I also look at the ongoing criminal prosecution of Soni Sori, an indigenous …

War Crimes And International Criminal Law, Stuart H. Deming

Akron Law Review

My remarks will focus on three particular areas relating to war crimes and international criminal law. These will include the prospect of an international criminal court, my experience with war crimes issues in Ethiopia, and how traditional practitioners can become involved with these issues.

A Dire Need For Legislative Reform, Patrick Dowdle

Pace International Law Review

In Section I of this note, I will lay out the several reasons why 18 U.S.C. § 1651 needs reform. I will provide background information on modern day piracy, including its economic impact, and will then break down varying definitions of piracy and their applications in recent cases. I will explore the split in U.S. case law caused by the application of the UNCLOS definition of piracy in Dire, and will identify the quandaries that result from the UNCLOS definition. In Section II, I will address two specific problems stemming from § 1651 that came to light as a result …

Proportional Response: The Need For More—And More Standardized—Veterans’ Courts, Claudia Arno

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Over the past two decades, judges and legislators in a number of states have recognized significant shortcomings in the ways traditional systems of criminal corrections address cases involving criminal offenders who are veterans of the U.S. armed services. This recognition has come at a time when policy-makers have similarly recognized that, for certain subsets of criminal offenders, “diversionary” programs may achieve better policy results than will traditional criminal punishment. In accordance with these dual recognitions, some states have implemented systems of veterans’ courts, in which certain offenders, who are also U.S. veterans, are diverted into programs that provide monitoring, training, …

Ditching "The Disposal Plan": Revisiting Miranda In An Age Of Terror, 20 St. Thomas L. Rev. 155 (2008), Kim D. Chanbonpin

Kim D. Chanbonpin

No abstract provided.

Unfunding Terror: The Legal Response To The Financing Of Global Terrorism, Jimmy Gurule

Jimmy Gurule

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 2,973 innocent civilians required as much as $500,000 to stage. At the time, al Qaeda was operating on an annual budget of between $30 and $50 million. However, despite the obvious fact that terrorists need money to terrorize, preventing the financing of terrorism was not a priority for the United States or the international community prior to 9/11. Jimmy Gurule, former Under Secretary for Enforcement in the US Department of the Treasury, provides the first book-length, comprehensive analysis of the legal regime that evolved following the terrorist attacks. The …

Complexity And Efficiency At International Criminal Courts, 29 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 1 (2014), Stuart K. Ford

Stuart Ford

One of the most persistent criticisms of international criminal tribunals has been that they cost too much and take too long. In response, this Article presents a new approach that utilizes two concepts: complexity and efficiency. The first half of this Article proposes a method for measuring the complexity of criminal trials and then uses that method to measure the complexity of the trials conducted at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The results are striking. Even the least complex ICTY trial is more complex than the average criminal trial in the United States, and the most …

Fairness And Politics At The Icty: Evidence From The Indictments, 39 N.C. J. Int'l L. & Com. Reg. 45 (2013), Stuart K. Ford

Stuart Ford

No abstract provided.

The International Criminal Court And Proximity To The Scene Of The Crime: Does The Rome Statute Permit All Of The Icc's Trials To Take Place At Local Or Regional Chambers?, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 715 (2010), Stuart K. Ford

Stuart Ford

No abstract provided.

A Social Psychology Model Of The Perceived Legitimacy Of International Criminal Courts: Implications For The Success Of Transitional Justice Mechanisms, 45 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 405 (2012), Stuart K. Ford

Stuart Ford

There is a large body of literature arguing that positive perceived legitimacy is a critical factor in the success of international criminal courts, and that courts can be engineered in such a way that they will be positively perceived by adjusting factors such as their institutional structure and outreach efforts. But in many situations the perceived legitimacy of international criminal courts has almost nothing to do with these factors. This Article takes the latest research in social psychology and applies it to survey data about perceptions of international criminal courts in order to understand how affected populations form attitudes about …

Crimes Against Humanity At The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: Is A Connection With Armed Conflict Required, 24 Ucla Pac. Basin L.J. 125 (2007), Stuart K. Ford

Stuart Ford

No abstract provided.

Autonomous Weapons And Accountability: Seeking Solutions In The Law Of War, Kelly Cass

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Autonomous weapons are increasingly used by militaries around the world. Unlike conventional unmanned weapons such as drones, autonomous weapons involve a machine deciding whether to deploy lethal force. Yet, because a machine cannot have the requisite mental state to commit a war crime, the legal scrutiny falls onto the decision to deploy an autonomous weapon. This Article focuses on the dual questions arising from that decision: how to regulate autonomous weapon use and who should be held criminally liable for an autonomous weapon’s actions. Regarding the first issue, this Article concludes that regulations expressly limiting autonomous weapon use to non-human …

Big Fish, Small Ponds: International Crimes In National Courts, Elizabeth B. Ludwin King

Indiana Law Journal

The principle of complementarity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court anticipates that perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity will be tried in domestic courts unless there is no state with jurisdiction willing or able to do so. This Article examines the situation where a state might be willing to engage in meaningful local justice but temporarily lacks the capability to do so due to the effects of the conflict. It argues that where the state submits a detailed proposal to the International Criminal Court (ICC) outlining the steps necessary to gain or regain the …

The Military's Sexual Assault Blind Spot, Eric R. Carpenter

Faculty Publications

The American military is in a well-publicized struggle to address its sexual assault problem. Critics say that those in the military who run the military justice system have a bias against the victims in these cases, where that bias is likely related to some form of sexism.

This article explores that problem and offers a social psychology explanation that supports the critics' position. This article explains the cognitive process that people use to solve these legal problems and then highlights a serious flaw in that process – the use of inaccurate rape schemas. This article focuses on two potential groups …

Trading Police For Soldiers: Has The Posse Comitatus Act Helped Militarize Our Police And Set The Stage For More Fergusons?, Arthur Rizer

Arthur L. Rizer III

The recent protests, police overreaction, and subsequent riots in Ferguson, Missouri, demonstrated to Americans and to the world the true extent of the militarization of police in communities across the United States. Deployed throughout Ferguson, in preemption and then in response to protesters’ actions, were ranks of heavily armed, flak-jacketed, camouflage uniformed police standing atop and around armored personnel carriers with machine guns mounted. Such a response evidences that the line between police and soldiers in communities is blurring, if not blurred. This militarization is, in part, a result of a principle Americans have held dear since our founding, that …

Combatting International Terrorism: The Role Of Congress, Dante B. Fascell

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Non-State Armed Groups And The Role Of Transnational Criminal Law During Armed Conflict, Christopher L. Blakesley, Dan E. Stigall

Scholarly Works

With the ascendance of the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the international community has struggled to adapt to the new international security context. Among the challenges that are currently being confronted are questions relating to how states may effectively facilitate international cooperation to counter ISIS (especially among countries in the Middle East and North Africa). Within this context, guidance from the United Nations on international cooperation posits that “[t]he universal counter-terrorism conventions and protocols do not apply in situations of armed conflict” – a legal position that would serve to stymie important cooperative …

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 …

Human Rights Thinking And The Laws Of War, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In a significant early case, the ICTY commented: “The essence of the whole corpus of international humanitarian law as well as human rights law lies in the protection of the human dignity of every person…. The general principle of respect for human dignity is . . . the very raison d'être of international humanitarian law and human rights law.”

Is it true that international humanitarian law and international human rights law share the same “essence,” and that essence is the general principle of respect for human dignity? Is it true that, in the words of Charles Beitz, humanitarian law is …

Self-Interest Or Self-Inflicted? How The United States Charges Its Service Members For Violating The Laws Of War, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This chapter explores the aspects of self-interest implicated by the US military prosecuting its own service members who violate the laws of war under different criminal charges than it prosecutes enemy belligerents who commit substantially similar offences. The chapter briefly explains how the US asserts criminal jurisdiction over its service members before turning to how the US military reports violations of the laws of war. It then sets out the US methodology for charging such violations as applied to its service members, and compares this methodology to that applied to those tried by military commissions. The chapter then discusses the …

Thinking Globally, Policy Locally: A Plan For Decentralized Law Enforcement In Côte D’Ivoire, __ J. Of Int’L Bus. & L. __ (Forthcoming 2015), Hugh Mundy

Hugh Mundy

During a 2009 speech in Ghana, President Barack Obama said, “Africa doesn’t need strongmen. It needs strong institutions.” Obama credited Ghana’s “impressive rates of growth” to the country’s “repeated peaceful transfers of power even in the wake of closely contested elections.” Free elections and non-violent power transfers, he said, “may lack the drama of the twentieth century’s liberation struggles” but “will ultimately be more significant.” Last July, the president expressed similar sentiments during a highly anticipated trip to Kenya. Côte d’Ivoire offers a stark example of the instability wrought when an unseated leader refuses to cede power. Once hailed as …

Deviance, Aspiration, And The Stories We Tell: Reconciling Mass Atrocity And The Criminal Law, Saira Mohamed

Saira Mohamed

Of Monsters And Man: Perpetrator Trauma And Mass Atrocity, Saira Mohamed

Saira Mohamed