Human Rights Law Commons^™

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.

Children, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This chapter, which appears in The Cambridge Companion to International Criminal Law (William A. Schabas ed. 2016), discusses how international criminal law instruments and institutions address crimes against and affecting children. It contrasts the absence of express attention in the post-World War II era with the multiple provisions pertaining to children in the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court. The chapter examines key judgments in that court and in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, as well as the ICC’s current, comprehensive approach to the effects that crimes within its jurisdiction have on children. The chapter concludes with a …

After Atrocity: Optimizing Un Action Toward Accountability For Human Rights Abuses, Steven R. Ratner

Michigan Journal of International Law

It is a great honor for me to be here to deliver the John Humphrey Lecture. Humphrey led one of those lives within the UN that shaped what the organization has become today—as one of the first generation of UN civil servants, he was to human rights what Ralph Bunche was to peacekeeping, or Brian Urquhart to UN mediation. To read his diaries, so beautifully edited by John Hobbins, is to see a world that has in many ways vanished, a nearly entirely male club, mostly of Westerners, that hammered out new treaties and mechanisms over fine wine and cigars …

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 …

Predictive Due Process And The International Criminal Court, Samuel C. Birnbaum

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The International Criminal Court (ICC) operates under a regime of complementarity: a domestic state prosecution of a defendant charged before the ICC bars the Court from hearing the case unless the state is unable or unwilling to prosecute the accused. For years, scholars have debated the role of due process considerations in complementarity. Can a state that has failed to provide the accused with adequate due process protections nonetheless bar a parallel ICC prosecution? One popular view, first expressed by Professor Kevin Jon Heller, holds that due process considerations do not factor into complementarity and the ICC could be forced …

From Commitment To Compliance: Enforceability Of Remedial Orders Of African Human Rights Bodies, Roger-Claude Liwanga

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Over the last seven decades, there has been a global proliferation of international and regional human rights tribunals. But with no coercive power to enforce their judgments, these international tribunals rely either on the good faith of the State parties or on the political process for the implementation of their remedial orders. This nonjudicial approach to enforcement has showed its limits, as most State parties are noncompliant with international judgments to the detriment of human rights victims. This article recommends a new approach involving the judicialization of the post-adjudicative stage of international proceedings as an avenue to increase the enforceability …

The Surprising Acquittals In The Gotovina And Perišić Cases: Is The Icty Appeals Chamber A Trial Chamber In Sheep’S Clothing?, Mark A. Summers

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Post-Postcolonial Woman Or Child, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This essay is based on remarks given as Distinguished Discussant for the 16th annual Grotius Lecture at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law/Biennial Conference of the International Law Association. The essay examines the international law status of women, on the one hand, and children, on the other, through the contemporary lens of the post-postcolonial world and the historical lens of Hugo Grotius and the colonialist era. In so doing, the essay responds to the principal Grotius Lecture, "Women and Children: The Cutting Edge of International Law," which was delivered by Radhika Coomarswamy, NYU Global Professor …

Reclaiming Fundamental Principles Of Criminal Law In The Darfur Case, George P. Fletcher, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

According to the authors, the Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and the Security Council referral of the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) bring to light two serious deficiencies of the ICC Statute and, more generally, international criminal law: (i) the systematic ambiguity between collective responsibility (i.e. the responsibility of the whole state) and criminal liability of individuals, on which current international criminal law is grounded, and (ii) the failure of the ICC Statute fully to comply with the principle of legality. The first deficiency is illustrated by highlighting the notions of genocide …

Remaking The Pen Mightier Than The Sword: An Evaluation Of The Growing Need For The International Protection Of Journalists, Dylan Howard

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Restrictions On Humanitarian Aid In Darfur: The Role Of The International Criminal Court, Mominah Usmani

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Foreword, The Future Of International Criminal Justice, Claudio Grossman

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

International criminal law attempts to sanction crimes that have a global nature and impact. After World War II, the international community came together to begin addressing important international issues, including preventing future war and non-war related atrocities and crimes. From the International Military Tribunals established in the wake of World War II to the world's first permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), a number of international bodies, treaties, and statutes have been formed in an effort to effectively administer criminal justice on an international level. Yet the administration and application of international criminal justice has faced significant hurdles and there are …

The Surprising Acquittals In The Gotovina And Perisic Cases: Is The Icty Appeals Chamber A Trial Chamber In Sheep's Clothing?, Mark A. Summers

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

No abstract provided.

International Law And The Future Of Peace, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

These remarks, delivered at the April 4, 2013, luncheon of the American Society of International Law Women in International Law Interest Group, reflects on contributions of Jane Addams and other members of the early 20th C. peace movement as a means to explore law and practice related to the contemporary use of force and armed conflict.

Regulation 55 And The Rights Of The Accused At The International Criminal Courts, Susana Sacouto, Katherine Cleary Thompson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Regulation 55 And The Rights Of The Accused At The International Criminal Court, Susana Sácouto, Katherine Cleary Thompson

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Criminal Courts And Tribunals, Chris Keeler

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Foreword, The Future Of International Criminal Justice, Claudio M. Grossman

Claudio M. Grossman

January Roundtable: Responding To The Syrian Crisis, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes Julio

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The World Next Genocide” by Simon Adams. New York Times, November 2012.

and

“Syria is Central to Holding Together the Mideast” by Condoleezza Rice. Washington Post, November 2012.

Syrians Crushed Between Humanitarianism And Realism, Philip Cunliffe

Human Rights & Human Welfare

With the UN High Commissioner for Refugees announcing early this year that the war in Syria may have claimed as many as 60,000 lives, two op-eds published late in 2012 usefully exemplify two contrasting frames that have thus far dominated international responses to the conflict—namely, the humanitarian frame and the geopolitical frame. Yet despite the apparent contrasts between these two frameworks, both reflect a similar contempt for the Syrian people and their right to self-determination. The humanitarian framing of the conflict emphasizes the scale of human suffering and the need to alleviate it, while the geopolitical frame accentuates political interests …

Syria: Not Libya, But Let’S Treat It Like It Is Anyway, Eric A. Heinze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The articles by Condoleezza Rice and Simon Adams advance a series of disquieting possibilities for the future of Syria if the US and other states fail to act. While I am sympathetic to the urgency with which both writers advance their claims, there is much strained and stretched logic—as well as outright naiveté—in both authors' arguments, especially Rice's.

Children And The First Verdict Of The International Criminal Court, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Child soldiers were a central concern in the first decade of the International Criminal Court; indeed, the court’s first trial, Prosecutor v. Lubanga, dealt exclusively with the war crimes of conscripting, enlisting, and using child soldiers. This article compares the attention that the court has paid to children – an attention that serves the express terms of the ICC Statute – with the relative inattention in post-World War II international instruments such as the statutes of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. The article then analyzes the Lubanga conviction, sentence, and reparations rulings. It recommends that the ICC focus attention on …

A Janus Look At International Criminal Justice, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Invoking the name of Janus, the Roman god who looked simultaneously at the past and the future, this article examines international criminal justice at a watershed moment, when a number of 20-year-old ad hoc tribunals were winding down even as the International Criminal Court was entering its teen years. First explored are challenges posed by politics – that is, the need to secure cooperation from states and from the U.N. Security Council – and economics – that is, the need to work within budgetary constraints. The article then surveys significant developments in each of a half-dozen international criminal courts and …

Impunity Writ Large: A Study Of Crimes Committed During Anti-Veerappan Operations, Saumya Uma

Dr. Saumya Uma

Advocating Socio-Economic Justice: Some Experiences Of The Icc-India Campaign And The Potential For A Law Clinic, Saumya Uma

Dr. Saumya Uma

Importance Of Effective Investigation Of Sexual Violence And Gender-Based Crimes At The International Criminal Court, Susana Sácouto, Katherine Cleary

Susana L. SáCouto

No abstract provided.

Sham Of The Moral Court? Testimony Sold As The Spoils Of War, Mark Findlay, Sylvia Ngane

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper analyses the critical influences on witness-based truth-telling for judicial decision-making in the international criminal tribunals. The judicial fixation on witness testimony reflects the weight and legitimacy given to personal testimony before international courts. This weight must be balanced by the awareness that a witness may provide false testimony intentionally, or may be coaxed by third parties to provide such testimony, as has been evidenced recently before the ICC. If witness testimony is tainted then its capacity to endorse the truth-finding function of the court is compromised. As a consequence the ability to assert that the tribunal is a …

Updates From The International And Internationalized Criminal Courts, Claire Grandison, Benjamin Watson, Erin Neff, Sara Harlow, Michelle Flash

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Victim Participation At The International Criminal Court And The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: A Feminist Project, Susana Sacouto

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The question this Article poses is whether victim participation--one of the most recent developments in international criminal law--has increased the visibility of the actual lived experience of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in the context of war, mass violence, or repression. Under the Rome Statute, victims of the world's most serious crimes were given unprecedented rights to participate in proceedings before the Court. Nearly a decade later, a similar scheme was established to allow victims to participate as civil parties in the proceedings before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC or Extraordinary Chambers), a court created …