International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

Wrong-Sizing International Justice? The Hybrid Tribunal In Sierra Leone, Chandra Lekha Sriram

Faculty Scholarship

As institutions of international justice proliferate, so do disputes about their legitimacy, and about what shape they ought to take. As truly international tools such as the International Criminal Court and the exercise of universal jurisdiction face political and practical challenges, some scholars and practitioners have advocated a distinct institutional solution: the hybrid court. These are courts that are neither purely national nor international, but rather that pursue accountability in the country where abuses and crimes occurred, but with both national and international staff, and utilizing a mixture of national and international law. Many have suggested that these tribunals represent …

Incitement In The Mosques: Testing The Limits Of Free Speech And Religious Liberty, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

In times of terror and tension, civil liberties are at their greatest peril. Nowadays, no individual rights are more in jeopardy than the freedoms of speech and religion. This is true particularly for followers of Islam, whose leaders have become increasingly radical in both their preaching and practice. "Kill the Jews!" and "Kill the Americans!" are chants heard regularly in many Middle Eastern mosques, as frightful echoes of the fatwa are issued by today's quintessential terrorist, Osama bin Laden. The incitement continues unabated to this day. In April of 2004, for example, a Muslim preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in …

Kathleen J. Hancock On Breaking Silence, The Case That Changed The Face Of Human Rights By Richard Alan White. Washington, Dc: Georgetown University Press, 2004. 320pp., Kathleen J. Hancock

Human Rights & Human Welfare

No abstract provided.

David E. Guinn On A Dictionary Of Human Rights (2nd Edition) By David Robertson. London, England: Europa Publications, 2004. 346pp., David E. Guinn

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

A Dictionary of Human Rights (2nd Edition) by David Robertson. London, England: Europa Publications, 2004. 346pp.

The Prohibition Of Widespread Rape As A Jus Cogens, Dean Adams

San Diego International Law Journal

This Comment explains why the prohibition of widespread rape should be recognized as a jus cogens through analyses of the failure of existing international legal instruments, advances within international law towards the universal prohibition of widespread rape, and policy reasons for classifying widespread rape as a jus cogens. In doing so, this comment will demonstrate the particular timeliness of this topic by reviewing the use of widespread rape in several countries through the 1990s, the widespread rape presently occurring in Kenya, and the emerging reports from Iraq of rape committed at the hands of the Saddam Hussein regime. Finally, this …

The United Nations Compensation Commission And The Balancing Of Rights Between Individual Claimants And The Government Of Iraq, John J. Chung

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Moderating Politics In Post-Conflict States: An Examination Of Bosnia And Herzegovina, Angela M. Banks

Faculty Publications

The individuals who negotiated the peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina considered ethnicity to be the most salient division within Bosnian society. Consequently they organized Bosnia's political structure around ethnic representation. While it is doubtful that peace in Bosnia would have been possible without guarantees for ethnic-based political representation, such guarantees have proven insufficient for building a functioning, stable, and cohesive state. This article analyzes the role that Bosnia's political framework, which focuses exclusively on ethnic representation, has played in impeding the development of a significant cadre of moderate political actors and in hindering the success …

Chechnya, Kelley Laird

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The root of animosity between Russians and Chechens extends for more than a century, beginning when Chechens opposed Russia’s conquest of the Caucasus between 1818 and 1917. Tension reached an apex in the 1940s when Stalin deported thousands of Chechens to Siberia and East Asia in fear that they would collaborate with German Nazis.

From Dyad To Triad: Reconceptualizing The Lawyer-Client Relationship For Litigation In Regional Human Rights Commissions, Melissa E. Crow

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article analyzes the standing requirements for NGO petitions to the Inter-American and African Commissions and explores the ways which they may undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of each of these for a, especially in the context of litigation on behalf of groups. The author evaluates various proposals for addressing these problems based on princeiples of class action and client-centered lawyering and concludes that they are inadequate.

The Convention On Cybercrime: A Harmonized Implementation Of International Penal Law: What Prospects For Procedural Due Process?, 23 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 329 (2005), Miriam F. Miquelon-Weismann

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

The CoE Convention on cybercrime provides a treaty-based framework that imposes on the participating nations the obligation to enact legislation criminalizing certain conduct related to computer systems, create investigative procedures and ensure their availability to domestic law enforcement authorities to investigate cybercrime offenses, including procedures to obtain electronic evidence in all of its forms and create a regime of broad international cooperation, including assistance in extradition of fugitives sought for crimes identified under the CoE Convention. Since there is no internationally recognized legal definition of computer crime, this article briefly presents the generally recognized categories of cybercrime and then proceeds …

Interim Measures In International Human Rights: Evolution And Harmonization, Jo M. Pasqualucci

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In this Article, the Author undertakes a comprehensive study of interim measures ordered in human rights cases before six international enforcement bodies--the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the United Nations Committee against Torture, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. An order of interim measures may require that the State take positive action, such as providing protection for human rights activists or journalists, or it may call upon the State to refrain from taking action, such as not extraditing a person or delaying …

The Evolving Nature Of The Crime Of Genocide, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1227 (2005), Ralph Ruebner

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tort Au Canadien: A Proposal For Canadian Tort Legislation On Gross Violations Of International Human Rights And Humanitarian Law, Caroline Davidson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Despite Canada's strong rhetoric on the protection of human rights, Canada lacks a meaningful tort scheme for gross human rights violations akin to that of the United States. This Article argues that legislation to facilitate tort suits for gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law can be consistent with, and in fact supports, Canada's commitments to human rights, the rule of law and multilateralism. In particular, provincial tort legislation should be one of a panoply of mechanisms in place to punish and deter violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. This Article proposes the shape of the …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Is Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention Compatible With The U.N. Charter?, Petr Valek

Michigan Journal of International Law

The main topic of this Note is the compatibility of unilateral humanitarian intervention with Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter (the Charter). Through its interpretation, the author will attempt to discover whether the Grotian idea of unilateral humanitarian intervention can survive in the environment of contemporary international law without its "just war appendix." This Note will separate this idea from its "just war justification" and approach the question of the compatibility of such intervention with the Charter as a legal positivist. In the interpretation of Article 2(4) of the Charter, this Note will try to avoid moral principles. Instead, it …

Is Poetry A War Crime? Reckoning For Radovan Karadzic The Poet-Warrior, Jay Surdukowski

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note will suggest that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) can use Karadzic's texts and affectations to warrior poetry in the pretrial brief and in admitted evidence, if and when Karadzic ultimately appears for trial. The violent nationalism of radio broadcasts, political journals, speeches, interviews, and manifestos have been fair game for the Office of the Prosecutor to make their cases in the last decade in both the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals. Why should poetry, perhaps the most powerful maker of myth and in the Yugoslavia context, a great mover …

Private Military Contractor Liability And Accountability After Abu Ghraib, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1237 (2005), Mark W. Bina

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Margot Morgan On The Politics Of Justice And Human Rights: Southeast Asia And Universalist Theory By Anthony J. Langlois. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 214 Pp., Margot Morgan

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Politics of Justice and Human Rights: Southeast Asia and Universalist Theory by Anthony J. Langlois. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 214 pp.

Supranationalism And The Superpower Rubicon, Imtiaz Hussain

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Chapter VII Powers of the United Nations Security Council by Erika de Wet. Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2004. 413pp.

Review Of Human Rights: Between Idealism And Realism, Steven R. Ratner

Reviews

For centuries, moral philosophers have regarded ethics and justice in the international plane as part of their domain. The move from the personal to the societal or national to the global seems effortless. In recent years, philosophers in ethics have devoted considerable attention to the ethical significance of nationality and patriotism, asking whether an impartial morality permits better treatment of an individual’s co-nationals; while those in politics have revisited issues of international justice through, for instance, works on human rights and just war theory. These two bodies of work both address what constitutes a just world and what role the …

The Meaning Of Moscow: "Non-Lethal" Weapons And International Law In The Early 21st Century, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

At the intersection of new weapon technologies and international humanitarian law, so-called "non-lethal" weapons have become an area of particular interest. This article analyses the relationship between "non-lethal" weapons and international law in the early 21st century by focusing on the most seminal incident to date in the short history of the "non-lethal" weapons debate, the use of an incapacitating chemical to end a terrorist attack on a Moscow theatre in October 2002. This tragic incident has shown that rapid technological change will continue to stress international law on the development and use of weaponry but in ways more politically …

Child Soldiers: Legal And Military Challenges In Confronting A Global Phenomenon, Benjamin Perrin

All Faculty Publications

Book note re: Children at War by Peter W. Singer (New York: Pantheon, 2005). "Over the last decade, the existence of child soldiers has been brought to light through a barrage of graphic international news agency articles and human rights reports. Usually, these materials only identify sporadic and often sensationalized cases. What has been less forthcoming is a deeper understanding of what P.W. Singer calls the “child-soldier doctrine”: a calculated and pervasive strategy by armed groups to use children as combatants. Children at War is an admirable effort at making this daunting topic accessible to a wider public policy audience, …

Agora: Icj Advisory Opinion On Construction Of A Wall In The Occupied Palestinian Territory: Editors' Introduction, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Bernard H. Oxman

Faculty Scholarship

Only rarely does an international judicial opinion attract attention on the front pages of newspapers around the world, and spur activism-or condemnation-from diverse segments of global civil society. The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is such a case. As the Court recognized in addressing the question put to it by the United Nations General Assembly, the choice of the term "wall" to designate the subject matter of the proceeding already opens up an area of debate, since not all of the contested structure is …

Sexual Violence And International Criminal Law: An Analysis Of The Ad Hoc Tribunal's Jurisprudence & The International Criminal Court's Elements Of Crimes, Angela M. Banks

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Constitutionally Excluded Confessions: Applying America's Lessons To A Democratic Iraq, Joseph T. Thai

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Re-Membering Law In The Internationalizing World, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

This article examines some of the challenges to understanding new, non-national legal configurations as contexts of origin color understandings and evaluations of legal standards allegedly shared across legal communities. It examines a case on assisted suicide, Pretty v. U.K., decided by the European Court of Human Rights. The case illustrates mechanisms of legal integration in the European court, followed by a process of dis-integration that occurred when the decision was reported to the French legal community. The French rendition reflected a legal community's inability to process common law information through civil law cognitive grids. The article addresses both the capacity …

The Law And Politics Of Contemporary Transitional Justice, Ruti Teitel

Articles & Chapters

Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Hissene Habre, Augusto Pinochet, Charles Taylor. There have never been more political leaders in the dock, or, under the shadow of its threat. Of what significance are these contemporary instances of transitional justice? This article uses the trials of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein as an occasion for revisiting and extending my ongoing project of tracing a genealogy of transitional justice.

In prior work, I have defined "transitional justice" as that conception of justice associated with periods of political change. In an ongoing genealogy, I tie the legal developments in this area to distinct political phases …