International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

At The Intersection Of Land Grievances And Legal Liability: The Need To Reconsider Contract Rights And Expectations At The Supranational Level, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lise Johnson, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

This Article explores how host governments’ legal obligations can affect or constrain their ability to address “land grievances,” which are defined as concerns raised by local individuals or communities in response to negative impacts of land-based investments. Obligations under international investment law, international human rights law, and investor-state contracts can be in tension or can directly conflict with one another, creating complexity for governments seeking to respond to land grievances. To explore the legal considerations that governments must navigate in this context, this Article considers several options that governments could pursue to respond to land grievances. In all of the …

The Syrian Refugee Crisis And The European Union: A Case Study Of Germany And Hungary, Simone-Ariane Schelb

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on the Common European Asylum System. It evaluates the extent to which the European Union was able to implement a common asylum system, identifies discrepancies between different European countries, primarily Germany and Hungary, and briefly examines the roots of these differences. To this end, the structure of the international refugee protection regime and the German and Hungarian asylum systems are analyzed. Furthermore, the thesis explores how the governments of the two countries perceive the rights of refugees and how their views have affected their handling of the crisis. The case …

Brief For Justice Richard J. Goldstone As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Sarah Paoletti

All Faculty Scholarship

Amicus curiae herein argue the present petition for a writ of certiorari should be granted as it rightly questions the very legitimacy of the military commission used to try Petitioner based on a theory of equality. International and comparative law further bolster Petitioner’s argument that the Military Commissions Act’s establishment of a segregated criminal justice system in which only non-citizens are subject to military commission jurisdiction violates the equal rights of Petitioner and all non-citizens subject to its jurisdiction.

Equality is a central principle undergirding human rights law that pre-dates the founding of the United Nations and the drafting of …

Comment On Us Trade And Investment Agreements Submitted To Ustr, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Comments to USTR Re: Review of US Trade and Investment Agreements (July 17, 2017): CCSI, in response to the United States Trade Representative’s request for public comment to inform its performance review of US trade and investment agreements, submitted Comments that focused on the impact that investment protection provisions, enforceable through investor-state dispute settlement, have on rights-compliant, inclusive sustainable development within the United States and abroad.

The Contribution Of The Special Court For Sierra Leone To The Law On Criminal Responsibility Of Children In International Criminal Law, Ana Paula Podcameni

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The revision of laws and the application of culpability to those most responsible for serious humanitarian law violations has functioned as a necessary condition for achieving peace in most post-war societies. However, there is an embarrassing silence when it comes to addressing the question of whether children are to be subjected to the principle of individual criminal responsibility. As morally controversial as it is, the question remains fundamental. Unfortunately, children have been involved in armed conflicts, as victims primarily, but not exclusively. Children are among those accused of having committed brutal and terrible international crimes in times of armed conflict …

Using A Shield As A Sword: Are International Organizations Abusing Their Immunity?, Daniel D. Bradlow

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The starting point for this paper is that IOs are as subjects of international law. Since IOs do not control territory or a population and so always operate within the jurisdiction of one of their member states, they are vulnerable to interference by their member states. In order to mitigate this risk, IOs have been granted qualified immunity, usually referred to as functional immunity, from the jurisdiction of their member states. For most of the twentieth century, this grant of functional immunity made sense for two reasons.

First, the founding states envisaged that IOs would have limited capacity to act …

What Investigative Resources Does The International Criminal Court Need To Succeed?: A Gravity-Based Approach, 16 Wash. U. Global Stud. L. Rev. 1 (2017), Stuart Ford

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

There is an ongoing debate about what resources the International Criminal Court (ICC) needs to be successful. On one side of this debate are many of the Court’s largest funders, including France, Germany, Britain, Italy, and Japan. They have repeatedly opposed efforts to increase the Court’s resources even as its workload has increased dramatically in recent years. On the other side of the debate is the Court itself and many of the Court’s supporters within civil society. They have taken the position that it is underfunded and does not have sufficient resources to succeed. This debate has persisted for years …

Writing Truth To Power: Remarks In Celebration Of Intlawgrrls’ Tenth Birthday, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

These remarks begin with a brief history of the founding and development of IntLawGrrls blog, in order both to open the blog's tenth-anniversary conference and to introduce other conference presentations, three of which appear in this same edition of the Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law. Noting the blog's tradition of honoring departed women as foremothers, the remarks nominates yet another: Sophie Scholl, a German student executed for her part in the White Rose movement that acted in resistance to the Nazi regime.

The Karadžić Genocide Conviction: Inferences, Intent, And The Necessity To Redefine Genocide, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article first discusses and analyzes the Genocide Convention and its strict definition of genocide and the "intent" requirement. It then focuses on the evolution of this definition in light of the recent Karadžić case. This Article demonstrates that in modern-day conflicts, the finding of genocidal intent may be an impossible task for the prosecution and that the ICTY Trial Chamber’s method of inferring intent based on knowledge and other indirect factors may be the only way that prosecutors will be able to obtain future genocide convictions. This Article then discusses a possible re-drafting and re-conceptualizing of the genocide definition …

Individual Criminal Responsibility For The Destruction Of Religious And Historic Buildings: The Al Mahdi Case, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, also known as Abou Tourab, was a member of the radical Islamic group Ansar Eddine, serving as one of four commanders during its brutal occupation of Timbuktu in 2012. The International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Al Mahdi on several charges of war crimes for intentional attacks against ten religious and historic buildings and monuments. All the buildings that Al Mahdi was charged with attacking had been under UNESCO protection and most had been listed as world heritage sites.

The case against Al Mahdi at the ICC unfolded relatively quickly and efficiently, from the official Malian …

War/Crimes And The Limits Of The Doctrine Of Sources, Steven R. Ratner

Book Chapters

International humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law (ICL) are the product of lawmaking processes that are not captured in the black-letter doctrine of sources under which Article 38 of the ICJ Statute is the rule of recognition for international law. Despite efforts by certain institutional players and scholars to place these two regimes squarely within Article 38, both remain distinct in terms of how actors determine whether a purported rule is a legal rule. These distinctions constitute a challenge to the idea of a unified rule of recognition and argue instead for looking for indicators (not rules) about a …

Plea Bargaining And International Criminal Justice, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Over the last two decades, plea bargaining has spread beyond the countries where it originated — the United States and other common law jurisdictions — and has become a global phenomenon. Plea bargaining is spreading rapidly to civil law countries that previously viewed the practice with skepticism. And it has now arrived at international criminal courts.

While domestic plea bargaining is often limited to non-violent crimes, the international courts allow sentence negotiations for even the most heinous offenses, including genocide and crimes against humanity. Its use remains highly controversial, and debates about plea bargaining in international courts continue in court …

Amicus Curaie, Submitted Susan Akram, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

B Summary of Argument

7. Palestinian refugees fall under a legal regime that is distinct from all other refugees in the world.¹² As such, they are covered by a series of special provisions that apply only to them and no other refugees. Their special status resulted from the decisions of the drafters of key international treaties to exclude Palestinian refugees from the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, and to conditionally exclude them from the benefits of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. …