Rule of Law Commons^™

Jlia 3:1 - The Future Of International Criminal Justice

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

No abstract provided.

Learning From Our Mistakes: The Belfast Project Litigation And The Need For The Supreme Court To Recognize An Academic Privilege In The United States, Kathryn L. Steffen

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

Through the Belfast Project, researchers sponsored by Boston College began to compile an oral history of the period of violent political conflict in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles” in a series of interviews. The interviewees’ participation in the project was conditioned on a strict promise of confidentiality. However, when authorities in the United Kingdom became suspicious that the interviews contained evidence of criminal activity, the United Kingdom, pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, requested the United States to subpoena the materials on its behalf. Satisfaction of the subpoena would mean not only turning over the interview recordings, but …

National Security And The Protection Of Constitutional Liberties: How The Foreign Terrorist Organization List Satisfies Procedural Due Process, Aaron Schwartz

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

Foreign terrorist organizations pose a real and constantly evolving threat to U.S. national security. The Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) List seeks to temper that threat by extending the U.S. government an effective legal tool to identify and sanction members of terrorist organizations and those who support them. At the same time, however, the government must also ensure that its efforts to protect U.S. citizens do not trample constitutionally protected rights. This comment begins by exploring the FTO List's authorizing legislation and the policy and goals of that legislation. The comment then reviews and analyzes a series of cases discussing the …

Third Time’S The Charm: Will Basel Iii Have A Measurable Impact On Limiting Future Financial Turmoil?, Erin Pentz

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

The Great Recession of 2008 caused banking failures around the globe. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision responded swiftly to create new minimum capital requirements for financial institutions in hopes of preventing additional failures and warding off future crises. Although the new capital standards that Basel III proposes are a step in the right direction, those standards alone will not be sufficient to prevent future bank failures in times of economic decline. Rather, true financial sector stability requires adequate capitalization of all institutions in terms of quality and quantity of capital, a strong regulatory framework, and a limitation on the …

International Institutions And The Resource Curse, Patrick Keenan

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

Many countries that are richly endowed with natural resources have failed to turn that resource wealth into sustained development. In many places, a small coterie of elites has become rich while most citizens see little benefit from their country’s vast resource wealth. A principal cause of this problem, often called the resource curse, is weak domestic institutions that permit leaders to enrich themselves and ignore the development needs of the country. From this, most scholars and policymakers have concluded that the way to fix the resource curse is to reform domestic institutions.

This article challenges the conventional wisdom and argues …

The Arab Spring’S Four Seasons: International Protections And The Sovereignty Problem, Jillian Blake, Aqsa Mahmud

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

In December 2010, public demonstrations erupted throughout the Middle East against autocratic regimes, igniting a regional political transformation known as the Arab Spring. Depending on events, modern international criminal and humanitarian law provided certain protections to vulnerable populations. However, international law did not provide a uniform degree of protection to civilians and combatants who faced similar circumstances. This Article argues for a uniform standard of protections for all populations affected by armed conflict, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It evaluates each of five major Arab Spring uprisings (Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt, Syria, and Libya) and describes the legal protections that …

The Impact Of The Icty On Atrocity-Related Prosecutions In The Courts Of Bosnia And Herzegovina, Yaël Ronen

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia was not mandated to proactively promote domestic prosecutions of war-related crimes. However, its operation may have had some impact on domestic proceedings concerning war-related crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The object of this article is to identify and explain this impact, with respect to qualitative (institutional legal capacities), quantitative (rates of prosecution and trends in sentencing), and normative (the adoption and application of criminal law norms) benchmarks.

The Limits Of Judicial Idealism: Should The International Criminal Court Engage With Consequentialist Aspirations?, Shahram Dana

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

Idealism about what international criminal justice mechanisms can achieve has lead to ideologically driven judicial decision-making in international criminal law (ICL). ICL idealism manifests itself in the belief that international criminal prosecutions can achieve an awesome array of goals. These include retribution, deterrence, reconciliation, rehabilitation, incapacitation, restoration, building a historical record, preventing revisionism, expressive and didactic functions, crystallizing international norms, general affirmative prevention, establishing peace, preventing war, vindicating international law prohibitions, setting standards for fair trials, combating impunity, and more. Ironically, this idealistic overreach, although usually well intended, has actually contributed to the politicization of the international judicial process.

The …

No Witness, No Case: An Assessment Of The Conduct And Quality Of Icc Investigations, Dermot Groome

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

The conduct and quality of investigations pursued by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court have come under increasing scrutiny and criticism from judges on the Court. Criticism is directed at the time and length of investigations; the quality of the evidence advanced in court; the inappropriate delegation of investigative functions, and the failure to interview witnesses in a way that is consistent with the Prosecution’s obligation to conduct investigations fairly under Article 54 of the Rome Statute. This essay explores these criticisms and concludes that the judges are justified in their concerns regarding the Prosecution’s investigative …

Foreword, Claudio Grossman

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

No abstract provided.

The Prohibition On The Use Of Force For Arms Control: The Case Of Iran’S Nuclear Program, Mary Ellen O'Connell, Reyam El Molla

Mary Ellen O'Connell

International law does not permit the use of military force against Iran to attempt to end its nuclear program. The resort to military force in international relations is covered first and foremost by Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter. Article 2(4) is a general prohibition on resort to force that includes resort to military force for arms control, including nuclear weapons control. The Charter has two express but limited exceptions to the ban on military force. A state that is the victim of a significant armed attack may use force in necessary and proportional self-defense; the United Nations Security …

Justice Stewart Meets The Press, Keith Bybee

Keith J. Bybee

Among the Supreme Court Justices who have articulated distinctive views of free expression, Justice Potter Stewart alone placed particular emphasis on the First Amendment's protection of a free press. Drawing upon the lessons of history, the plain language of the Constitution, the political events of his day, and his own personal experience, Stewart argued that the organized news media should be considered an essential part of the checks-and-balances competition between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government. Stewart’s emphasis on the special structural function of the established press placed him at odds with most of his colleagues …

Commons At The Intersection Of Peer Production, Citizen Science, And Big Data: Galaxy Zoo, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

The knowledge commons research framework is applied to a case of commons governance grounded in research in modern astronomy. The case, Galaxy Zoo, is a leading example of at least three different contemporary phenomena. In the first place Galaxy Zoo is a global citizen science project, in which volunteer non-scientists have been recruited to participate in large-scale data analysis via the Internet. In the second place Galaxy Zoo is a highly successful example of peer production, sometimes known colloquially as crowdsourcing, by which data are gathered, supplied, and/or analyzed by very large numbers of anonymous and pseudonymous contributors to an …

The Mask Of Virtue: Theories Of Aretaic Legislation In A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan