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Articles 1 - 25 of 25
Full-Text Articles in Human Rights Law
The Post-Ongwen Case Period And The Reconciliation Process In Northern Uganda: Local Communities As A Site Of Knowledge, Christelle Molima Bameka
The Post-Ongwen Case Period And The Reconciliation Process In Northern Uganda: Local Communities As A Site Of Knowledge, Christelle Molima Bameka
Scholarly Articles
By providing victims with more space in the Ongwen case, the International Criminal Court (icc) has significantly contributed to the healing of the trauma and community reconciliation in northern Uganda. That said, this court has also raised issues that could affect local efforts to achieve peace, namely the positioning of victims of child soldiers vis-à-vis criminal child soldiers. Drawing on qualitative data collected through focus group discussions with some community members from locations under investigation by the icc, this sociolegal study examines the victims’ narratives about child soldiers and the different ideas of human rights that emerge. Then, it explores …
The Visualities And Aesthetics Of Prosecuting Aged Defendants, Mark Drumbl, Caroline Fournet
The Visualities And Aesthetics Of Prosecuting Aged Defendants, Mark Drumbl, Caroline Fournet
Scholarly Articles
The prosecution—whether domestic or international—of international crimes and atrocities may implicate extremely aged defendants. Much has been written about the legalisms that inhere (or not) in trying these barely alive individuals. Very little however has been written about the aesthetics the barely alive encrust into the architecture of courtrooms, the optics these defendants suffuse into the trial process, and the expressive value of punishing them. This is what we seek to do in this project.
Refugees Under Duress: International Law And The Serious Nonpolitical Crime Bar, David Baluarte
Refugees Under Duress: International Law And The Serious Nonpolitical Crime Bar, David Baluarte
Scholarly Articles
Congress intended that the serious nonpolitical crime bar under United States asylum law have the same meaning and scope as the 1F(b) Refugee Convention exclusion clause. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that it was the intent of Congress to not only replicate the language of the provisions of the Refugee Convention in United States law, but to incorporate the full extent of the meaning of such language and bring the United States into compliance with its treaty obligations. Accordingly, when Congress reproduced exactly the language of the Article 1F(b) exclusion clause in the INA, it intended for that provision …
Submission Of Amicus Curiae Observations In The Case Of The Prosecutor V. Dominic Ongwen, Erin Baines, Kamari M. Clarke, Mark A. Drumbl
Submission Of Amicus Curiae Observations In The Case Of The Prosecutor V. Dominic Ongwen, Erin Baines, Kamari M. Clarke, Mark A. Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
The important questions laid out by the Appeals Chamber in this case highlight the need for the proper delineation and interplay between mental illness and criminal responsibility under international law. Specifically, this case represents a watershed moment for the Appeals Chamber to set a framework for adjudicating mental illness in the context of collectivized child abuse and trauma. This is especially true for former child soldiers who occupy both a victim and alleged perpetrator status.
"A Hussy Who Rode On Horseback In Sexy Underwear In Front Of The Prisoners": The Trials Of Buchenwald’S Ilse Koch, Mark A. Drumbl, Solange Mouthaan
"A Hussy Who Rode On Horseback In Sexy Underwear In Front Of The Prisoners": The Trials Of Buchenwald’S Ilse Koch, Mark A. Drumbl, Solange Mouthaan
Scholarly Articles
Ilse Koch’s trials for her role in atrocities at the Nazi Buchenwald concentration camp served as visual spectacles and primed her portrayal in media and public spaces. Koch’s conduct was credibly rumored to be one of frequent affairs, simultaneous lovers, and the sexual humiliation of prisoners. The gendered construction of her sexual identity played a distortive role in her intersections with law and with post-conflict Germany. Koch’s trials revealed two different dynamics. Koch’s actions were refracted through a patriarchal lens which spectacularized female violence and served as an optical space to (re)establish appropriate feminine mores. Feminist critiques of Koch’s trials …
Investors As International Law Intermediaries: Using Shareholder Proposals To Enforce Human Rights, Kishanthi Parella
Investors As International Law Intermediaries: Using Shareholder Proposals To Enforce Human Rights, Kishanthi Parella
Scholarly Articles
One of the biggest challenges with international law remains its enforcement. This challenge grows when it comes to enforcing international law norms against corporations and other business organizations. The United Nations Guiding Principles recognizes the “corporate responsibility to respect human rights,” which includes human rights due diligence practices that are adequate for “assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting upon the findings, tracking responses, and communicating how impacts are addressed.” Unfortunately, many corporations around the world are failing to implement adequate human rights due diligence practices in their supply chains. This inattention leads to significant harms for …
Post-Genocide Justice In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl
Post-Genocide Justice In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
The Rwandan genocide triggered a vast number of criminal and quasi-criminal prosecutions. Rwanda therefore constitutes an example of a robust and rapid implementation of criminal accountability for atrocity. Rwanda, moreover, departed from other countries – such as South Africa – by eschewing a truth and reconciliation process as part of a transitional justice process. This chapter unpacks three levels of judicialization that promoted criminal responsibility for atrocity in Rwanda: the ICTR, specialized chambers of national courts, and gacaca proceedings. The ICTR indicted roughly 90 individuals, the national courts convicted in the area of 10,000 defendants (with some proceedings remaining ongoing), …
Protecting Stateless Refugees In The United States, David Baluarte
Protecting Stateless Refugees In The United States, David Baluarte
Scholarly Articles
This article proposes a more complete and nuanced consideration of statelessness in asylum adjudication procedures in the United States and the possibility of reopening previously denied asylum claims for this purpose. The article proceeds in four parts, beginning with a discussion of statelessness in the United States. Next, the article describes the international protection frameworks for both refugees and stateless persons and identifies important points of intersection between these frameworks. Then the article argues that discriminatory denationalization that renders a person stateless triggers refugee protection, thereby making victims of such deprivation eligible for asylum in the United States. The article …
Family In The Balance: Barton V. Barr And The Systematic Violation Of The Right To Family Life In U.S. Immigration Enforcement, David Baluarte
Family In The Balance: Barton V. Barr And The Systematic Violation Of The Right To Family Life In U.S. Immigration Enforcement, David Baluarte
Scholarly Articles
The United States systematically violates the international human right to family life in its system of removal of noncitizens. Cancellation of removal provides a means for noncitizens to challenge their removal based on family ties in the United States, but Congress has placed draconian limits on the discretion of immigration courts to cancel removal where noncitizens have committed certain crimes. The recently issued U.S. Supreme Court decision in Barton v. Barr illustrates the troubling trend of affording less discretion for immigration courts to balance family life in removal decisions that involve underlying criminal conduct. At issue was the “stop-time rule” …
Hard And Soft Law Preferences In Business And Human Rights, Kishanthi Parella
Hard And Soft Law Preferences In Business And Human Rights, Kishanthi Parella
Scholarly Articles
States and non-state actors, such as business organizations and NGOs, have varying preferences among regulatory options in business and human rights. Some actors prefer soft law governance while others advocate for legally binding solutions at the national and international levels. In this essay, I explore some of the factors that may explain why state and non-state actors hold these diverse preferences. I conclude that while some of these preferences may be attributable to the unique advantages of soft lawor hard law, other preferences likely depend on the effects produced by the interaction of both types of law within the broader …
Is It Time For Global Justice? International Human Rights And Wrongs In The 21st Century, Christopher J. Whelan
Is It Time For Global Justice? International Human Rights And Wrongs In The 21st Century, Christopher J. Whelan
Scholarly Articles
Human rights are controversial, yet the question posed in this Article – “is it time for Global Justice?” – begs several, critical, questions which must be addressed first. If humans disagree on which rights should be universal; if human rights are “little more than thistledown, springing up at random and blowing away as time’s whirligig spins,” then how on earth can there be international human rights?
Book Review, Marcos Zunino, Justice Framed: A Genealogy Of Transitional Justice (2019), Mark A. Drumbl
Book Review, Marcos Zunino, Justice Framed: A Genealogy Of Transitional Justice (2019), Mark A. Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
Transitional justice initiatives, broadly speaking, respond to systematic human rights abuses. These initiatives take multiple shapes and forms. This means that the actual practice of transitional justice is diverse and organic. Transitional justice discourse, however, is aspirational, normative and selective. It is less heterogeneous and far more directive. Marcos Zunino’s eye-opening book, Justice Framed, is about gaps between narrative discourse and tangible practice. It is about the effects of discourse on practice. More pointedly, Justice Framed is about how discourse ‘surfaces’ certain kinds of practices of the past while sidelining and ignoring others. Hence, to come full circle, this book …
Book Review, Jamie Rowen, Searching For Truth In The Transitional Justice Movement (2017) & Leonie Steinl, Child Soldiers As Agents Of War And Peace: A Restorative Transitional Justice Approach To Accountability For Crimes Under International Law (2017), Mark A. Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
Why do truth commissions emerge following some conflicts but not others? Jamie Rowen tackles this question in Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement. Rowen approaches this topic through a detailed study of three jurisdictions: the former Yugoslavia, Colombia, and the United States. Although truth commissions did progress in Colombia, they stalled in both the former Yugoslavia in the wake of the Balkan Wars as well as in the United States in regard to the conduct of US officials after the events on 11 September 2001. Rowen unpacks what happened and what failed to happen — and why …
The Information Regulation Of Business Actors, Kishanthi Parella
The Information Regulation Of Business Actors, Kishanthi Parella
Scholarly Articles
A transnational legal order (TLO) is emerging regarding the role of businesses in respecting human rights. This legal order includes multistakeholder initiatives, international organization recommendations and guidelines, NGO certifications, and other voluntary instruments. Many of the norms within this TLO are nonbinding and therefore lack mandatory compliance; what they may possess is persuasive power, particularly when the norms are developed, endorsed, and managed by reputable organizations. It is that reputational, or legitimacy, advantage that matters for encouraging industry associations to comply with the nonbinding norms associated with these organizations. Industry associations and other business actors will gravitate more towards legitimacy …
The United States And The International Criminal Court: A Complicated, Uneasy, Yet At Times Engaging Relationship, Leila Nadya Sadat, Mark A. Drumbl
The United States And The International Criminal Court: A Complicated, Uneasy, Yet At Times Engaging Relationship, Leila Nadya Sadat, Mark A. Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
The United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court and this Article demonstrates that it has a complicated relationship to questions of complementarity in the Rome Statute. Federal and (to a small degree) state criminal law in the United States codifies some of the crimes that, conceptually, relate to conduct proscribed in the Rome Statute, but coverage is incomplete and jurisdiction may often be lacking. Thus, the United States is able to prosecute a limited number of ICC crimes in federal courts as such, particularly genocide, torture, and some war crimes including the recruitment or use of …
Victims Who Victimise, Mark A. Drumbl
Victims Who Victimise, Mark A. Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
How to speak of the agency of the oppressed to harm others in times of atrocity? This article juxtaposes Holocaust literature (Levi, Frankl, Kertesz, Ka-Tzetnik) with Holocaust judging (the Kapo collaborator trials in Israel). It does so didactically to interrogate international criminal law’s interaction with former child soldier Dominic Ongwen, currently awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court.
Transitional Justice Moments, Mark A. Drumbl
Transitional Justice Moments, Mark A. Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
Human rights are admittedly abstract but remain deeply personal. Often, however, it is easier for transitional justice to grapple with abstracted rights than it is to come to terms with actual human beings with all our indecision, nuance, resilience and unpredictability. A transitional justice brimming with abstractions and guidelines but that condescends flesh-and-blood beings quickly becomes ineffective and dehumanized. The vacillations of the human condition may well exasperate and confound, but they may also surprise and please. They may demonstrate growth and reveal great beauty. Senegalese writer Mariama Ba, in So Long a Letter, recounts how Ramatoulaye responds to …
The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities: Reflection On Four Flaws That Tarnish Its Promise, Lucia A. Silecchia
The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities: Reflection On Four Flaws That Tarnish Its Promise, Lucia A. Silecchia
Scholarly Articles
On December 13, 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“CRPD”). Widely touted as the “first comprehensive human rights treaty of the 21st century,” and effusively praised for its open negotiation process, the CRPD was opened for signature on March 30, 2007. The CRPD quickly entered into force on May 3, 2008. As it rapidly amassed signatories, the CRPD inspired great hope that its comprehensive approach would do much to overcome the consistent failure to promote the dignity of those with disabilities in meaningfully concrete ways.
The CRPD has garnered much recent and …
Book Review, Victor Peskin, International Justice In Rwanda And The Balkans: Virtual Trials And The Struggle For State Cooperation (2008), Mark A. Drumbl
Book Review, Victor Peskin, International Justice In Rwanda And The Balkans: Virtual Trials And The Struggle For State Cooperation (2008), Mark A. Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
Implementation of the law requires strategic cooperation. No surprise there: It does so even in the most taut domestic polity. Law is intrinsically contingent. And political. But what does the particularly acute dependency of international criminal law on political cooperation teach us about its pertinence? Its promise? Its limits? It is one thing to assess the functionality of international criminal law. It is another to gauge the value of international criminal law, when actuated through adversarial trials, in reconstituting shattered communities; and its effectiveness as a tool of transitional justice. At its core, Virtual Trials is an analysis about functionality. …
Karen E. Woody, Putting Pandora On Trial, 98 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 699 (2008) (Reviewing Mark A. Drumbl, Atrocity, Punishment, And International Law (2007)), Karen E. Woody
Scholarly Articles
In the wake of increasing globalization over the past fifty years, international criminal law has transformed from a toothless shadow into a concrete reality; the International Criminal Court is the most recent and impressive institutional accomplishment. Unfortunately, international criminal law has enjoyed this progress on the heels of increasingly horrific international crimes. International adjudicatory institutions have taken many forms and the sentences they deliver have varied widely. In Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law, Mark Drumbl reviews the strides made in international criminal law from the Nuremberg trials through present-day trials, particularly those related to the crimes committed in Rwanda and …
Diamonds On The Souls Of Her Shoes: The Kimberly Process And The Morality Exception To Wto Restrictions, Karen E. Woody
Diamonds On The Souls Of Her Shoes: The Kimberly Process And The Morality Exception To Wto Restrictions, Karen E. Woody
Scholarly Articles
This Article analyzes the events predicating the Kimberley Process and examines the validity of the Kimberley Process in relation to international trade obligations. Part I describes the background of conflict diamonds and their role in African wars. The section outlines the need for regulation in the diamond industry and examines how other attempted measures at curbing the illicit diamond trade have fallen short. Part II details the Kimberley Process and its guidelines. This section analyzes the relevant U.S. legislation passed in 2003, the Clean Diamond Trade Act. Part II also suggests that because the Kimberley Process ("KP") is predicated upon …
Pluralizing International Criminal Justice, Mark A. Drumbl
Pluralizing International Criminal Justice, Mark A. Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
This Review Essay of Philippe Sands' (ed.) From Nuremberg to the Hague (2003) explores a number of controversial aspects of the theory and praxis of international criminal law. The Review Essay traces the extant heuristic of international criminal justice institutions to Nuremberg and posits that the Nuremberg experience suggests the need for modesty about what criminal justice actually can accomplish in the wake of mass atrocity. It also explores the place of one person's guilt among organic crime, the reality that international criminal law may gloss over criminogenic conditions in its pursuit of individualized accountability, the possibility of group sanction …
Collective Violence And Individual Punishment: The Criminality Of Mass Atrocity, Mark A. Drumbl
Collective Violence And Individual Punishment: The Criminality Of Mass Atrocity, Mark A. Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
There is a recent proliferation of courts and tribunals to prosecute perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The zenith of this institution-building is the permanent International Criminal Court, which came into force in 2002. Each of these new institutions rests on the foundational premise that it is appropriate to treat the perpetrator of mass atrocity in the same manner that domestic criminal law treats the common criminal. The modalities and rationales of international criminal law are directly borrowed from the domestic criminal law of those states that dominate the international order. In this Article, I challenge this …
Universal Human Rights, The United Nations, And The Telos Of Human Dignity, William J. Wagner
Universal Human Rights, The United Nations, And The Telos Of Human Dignity, William J. Wagner
Scholarly Articles
In this short essay, I seek to provide a description of the way the rights framework, by its nature, functions to unify global practice around normative ideals. I then outline obstacles, both theoretical and practical, to the effective functioning of this framework and the advancement of its purpose. Next, I lay out and critique the means that the Church, in its official teaching, proposes for overcoming these obstacles. I conclude by sketching briefly what I understand to be a more adequate program for addressing the impediments that exist to the realization of the aspiration of universal respect for human dignity …
Progress For Pilgrims: An Analysis Of The Holy See-Israel Fundamental Agreement, Geoffrey R. Watson
Progress For Pilgrims: An Analysis Of The Holy See-Israel Fundamental Agreement, Geoffrey R. Watson
Scholarly Articles
This Article asks whether international human rights law obliges states to admit foreign pilgrims, and if so, whether the existence of such an obligation should influence interpretation of the Fundamental Agreement. Part I of this Article takes up a logically prior question: whether the Fundamental Agreement is a legally binding treaty, and whether it should be interpreted in accordance with treaty law. The Article rejects recent suggestions that one or both parties lack the capacity to make treaties, and it concludes that the Agreement is a binding treaty that should be interpreted in accordance with the Vienna Convention on the …