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The Rohingya Genocide, Paul Williams, Todd F. Buchwald, Jenny Domino, Rebecca Hamilton, Michael P. Scharf, Meilena Sterio

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Memories Of Judgment: Constructing The Icty's Legacies, Diane Orentlicher

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

As the title of this symposium reflects, a critically important dimension of the Tribunal's legacy is its role in understanding the war and genocide in Bosnia. In my remarks, I want to drill down on the word "understanding," one of the most complex facets of the ICTY's legacy. In brief, I will make four points. The first is that the ICTY's expected contribution to understanding the 1990s conflict in Bosnia and the atrocities associated with that conflict was deeply important to many individuals whom I have interviewed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in Serbia, about the ICTY's impact in their …

Access To Justice For Victims Of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Claudia Martin, Susana Sácouto, Susana Sacouto

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Despite persistent impunity for conflict-related sexual violence, there have been a limited number of significant cases holding perpetrators accountable within national justice systems. One of these cases is the Sepur Zarco case, in which two former military members were accused of committing acts of sexual violence, sexual slavery and domestic slavery near a military outpost in Sepur Zarco during the civil war in Guatemala. In a landmark verdict issued in February 2016, a Guatemalan court convicted the two accused, marking the first time a Guatemalan court has convicted former military members for acts of sexual violence committed in the context …

Lawyering Peace: Infusing Accountability Into The Peace Negotiations Process, Paul Williams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

On August 28, 2019, Dr. Paul R. Williams delivered the Bruce J. Klatsky Endowed Lecture on Human Rights at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. This article, based on his lecture, examines how justice has repeatedly found a foothold in peace processes, and how the international community can continue to work towards embedding accountability into peace processes to achieve durable peace. This article traces the arc of accountability in peace processes, from an era of impunity and a period of stepping stones moments, to today’s uncertain moment for post-conflict accountability and justice mechanisms. The author argues that comprehensive transitional …

Documentation For Accountability, Paul Williams, Jessica Levy

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The cost of armed conflict is borne not only in the stark number of lives lost, but also in the grave atrocity crimes committed during these periods. Despite the legal protections set forth in the Geneva Conventions and other foundational documents of international humanitarian law, perpetrators continue to commit crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. Documenting these atrocity crimes has become a crucial step in efforts to secure justice for victims and survivors of these atrocities. To support the expanding field of human rights documentation, the international community must redouble its efforts to ensure that civil society actors engaged …

Promise Amid Peril: Prea's Efforts To Regulate An End To Prison Rape, Brenda V. Smith

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article discusses the modest aspirations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (“PREA”) that passed unanimously in the United States Congress in 2003. The Article posits that PREA created opportunities for holding correctional authorities accountable by creating a baseline for safety and setting more transparent expectations for agencies’ practices for protecting prisoners from sexual abuse. Additionally, the Article posits that PREA enhanced the evolving standards of decency for the Eighth Amendment and articulated clear expectations of correctional authorities to provide sexual safety for people in custody.

Rehabilitating Our Immigration System With The Rehabilitation Act: Rejecting Video Teleconferencing And Presumptively Requiring In-Person Court Appearances As A Reasonable Accommodation For Mentally Incompetent Detainees, Cassandra H. Chee

American University Law Review

In recent years, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the office of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) responsible for adjudicating immigration cases, has increasingly relied on the use of video teleconferencing (VTC) in immigration court proceedings, as opposed to in-person court appearances. Citing VTC as an efficient and effective way to conduct hearings and manage its large docket backlog, EOIR has installed VTC units at its headquarters and at nearly all immigration courts, and the agency’s use of VTC has risen exponentially under the Trump Administration. Yet, VTC has been proven to harm immigration judges’ abilities to assess …

Illiberalism And Authoritarianism In The American States, James A. Gardner

American University Law Review

Federalism contemplates subnational variation, but in the United States, the nature and significance of that variation has long been contested. In light of the recent turn, globally and nationally, toward authoritarianism, and the concurrent sharp decline in public support not merely for democracy but also for the philosophical liberalism on which democracy rests, it is necessary to discard or to substantially revise prior accounts of the nature of state-to-state variation in the United States. All such accounts implicitly presuppose a common commitment, across the political spectrum, to the core tenets of democratic liberalism, and consequently assume that subnational variations in …

Equality Is A Brokered Idea, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay examines the Supreme Court's stunning decision in the census case, Department of Commerce v. New York. I characterize Chief Justice John Roberts' decision to side with the liberals as an example of pursuing the ends of equality by other means – this time, through the rule of reason. Although the appeal was limited in scope, the stakes for political and racial equality were sky high. In blocking the administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, 5 members of the Court found the justification the administration gave to be a pretext. In this instance, that lie …

Social Media Platforms In International Criminal Investigations, Rebecca Hamilton

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In the summer of 2017, hundreds of thousands of videos of the Syrian conflict suddenly disappeared from YouTube. The videos had been published on channels like the Aleppo Media Center, the Shaam News Agency, and the Violations Documentation Center in Syria, which are run by Syrian civil society groups that have been documenting war crimes and other human rights violations since the conflict began in 2011. In a war zone that has been extraordinarily difficult for outside investigators to access, the videos provided crucial evidence that many hoped would eventually lead to international criminal prosecutions. One can readily imagine that …

Prosecuting Foreign Bribery In National Projects: A Multi-Phased Approach To Reduce Corruption, Julia E. Johnson

American University Business Law Review

The gradual establishment of an international mechanism to review and prosecute allegations of corruption could help to deter fraudulent conduct. Fraudulent conduct often reduces the economic benefits associated with large-scale development or investment projects. These projects are generally awarded through contract bidding; the bidding outcome may be dictated by bribery and other corrupt behaviors by local officials overseeing the project. The money earmarked for the project may in turn be siphoned off to the bribe recipients for private gain, leaving citizens unable to appreciate the fruits of any such project. For this reason, reducing corruption should remain a key priority. …

Erasing Race, Llezlie Green

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Low-wage workers frequently experience exploitation, including wage theft, at the intersection of their racial identities and their economic vulnerabilities. Scholars, however, rarely consider the role of wage and hwur exploitation in broader racial subordination frameworks. This Essay considers the narratives that have informed the detachment of racial justice from the worker exploitation narrative and the distancing of economic justice from the civil rights narrative. It then contends that social movements, like the Fight for $15, can disrupt narrow understandings of low-wage worker exploitation and proffer more nuanced narratives that connect race, economic justice, and civil rights to a broader antisubordination …

Strengthening American War Crimes Accountability, Geoffrey S. Corn, Rachel E. Vanlandingham

American University Law Review

The United States needs to improve accountability for its service members’ war crimes. President Donald J. Trump dangerously intensified a growing national misunderstanding regarding the critical nexus between compliance with the laws of war and the health and efficacy of the U.S. military. This Article pushes back against such confusion by demonstrating why compliance with the laws of war, and accountability for violations of these laws, together constitute vital duties owed to our women and men in uniform.

This Article reveals that part of the fog of war surrounding criminal accountability for American war crimes is due to structural defects …

Promise Amid Peril: Prea's Efforts To Regulate An End To Prison Rape, Brenda V. Smith

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

This Article discusses the modest aspirations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (“PREA”) that passed unanimously in the United States Congress in 2003. The Article posits that PREA created opportunities for holding correctional authorities accountable by creating a baseline for safety and setting more transparent expectations for agencies’ practices for protecting prisoners from sexual abuse. Additionally, the Article posits that PREA enhanced the evolving standards of decency for the Eighth Amendment and articulated clear expectations of correctional authorities to provide sexual safety for people in custody.

The Language Of Harm: What The Nassar Victim Impact Statements Reveal About Abuse And Accountability, Jamie Abrams, Amanda Potts

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article examines 148 Victim Impact Statements that were delivered to the
court in the Larry Nassar criminal sentencing. Larry Nassar was a doctor for the
United States Gymnastics Association and an employee of Michigan State University
who treated elite athletes, predominantly gymnasts. Nassar pleaded guilty to child
pornography and first-degree criminal sexual misconduct charges in Michigan. His
sentencing received worldwide attention as victims delivered impact statements
describing the harm and betrayal of his conduct. Using corpus-based discourse
analysis, this Article examines the complex strategies that the victims deployed to
describe who Nassar was (a doctor, a monster, a friend), …

The Overlapping Web Of Data, Territoriality And Sovereignty, Jennifer Daskal

Contributions to Books

Provides a framework to better understand Global Legal Pluralism and the current international state of law.

Equips practitioners, theorists, and students with deeper insights and analytical tools to describe the conflict among legal and quasi-legal systems.

Analyzes global legal pluralism in light of legal theory, constitutionalism, conflict of laws, international law, commercial transactions, and as it affects indigenous polities, religious orders, and citizenship.

Sexual Contact Between A Suspect And Police Officers: How Far Should Police Go To Prove Prostitution?, Paula Del Valle Torres

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

#Livingwhileblack: Blackness As Nuisance, Taja-Nia Y. Henderson, Jamila Jefferson-Jones

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rewarding Bad Behavior In Initial-Review Collateral Proceedings: Teague Says Yes, Due Process Says No, Bethany Callahan

American University Law Review

For centuries, criminal defendants have had the opportunity to challenge their convictions with a writ of habeas corpus. The Founding Fathers described the writ as a path to liberation for those imprisoned without sufficient cause. It is a critical safeguard of individual freedom against lawless state action in criminal proceedings. However, with every safeguard comes a loophole.

The finality of state court decisions is revered in the American criminal justice system. It is no surprise, then, that the Supreme Court has approached the issue of whether to retroactively apply new laws to cases already finalized on direct review with trepidation. …

Race, Rights, And The Representation Of Children, Barry Feld, Perry Moriearty

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Fiduciary Theory Of Prosecution, Bruce A. Green, Rebecca Roiphe

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Dichotomy Between Overcriminalization And Underregulation, Ellen S. Podgor

American University Law Review

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) failed to properly investigate Bernard Madoff’s multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme for over ten years. Many individuals and charities suffered devastating financial consequences from this criminal conduct, and when eventually charged and convicted, Madoff received a sentence of 150 years in prison. Improper regulatory oversight was also faulted in the investigation following the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Employees of the company lost their lives, and individuals were charged with criminal offenses. These are just two of the many examples of agency failures to properly enforce and provide regulatory oversight, with eventual criminal prosecutions resulting from the …

Introduction, Ezra Rosser

Contributions to Books

This is the introduction to Holes in the Safety Net: Federalism and Poverty (Ezra Rosser ed., Cambridge University Press, 2019). The table of contents for the book, with links to the other chapters, can be found below: Introduction (this document) Ezra Rosser Part I: Welfare and Federalism Ch. 1 Federalism, Entitlement, and Punishment across the US Social Welfare State Wendy Bach Ch. 2 Laboratories of Suffering: Toward Democratic Welfare Governance Monica Bell, Andrea Taverna, Dhruv Aggarwal, and Isra Syed Ch. 3 The Difference in Being Poor in Red States versus Blue States Michele Gilman Part II: States, Federalism, and Antipoverty …

Undocumented: The Need To Further Address The Intersection Of Immigration And Domestic Violence In The United States, Julie Flower

Legislation and Policy Brief

No abstract provided.

In The Right Direction, Family Diversity In The Inter-American System Of Human Rights, Macarena Sáez

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article argues that the Inter-American System of Human Rights has contributed to a family system that embraces gender equality and non-heterosexual and gender non-conforming families. It argues that the system had, from its inception, an expansive idea of the family that included associations outside marriage. This was the basis for a robust development of the concepts of equality and non-discrimination by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Although the IACtHR has only decided a handful of cases related to the non-heterosexual family, its rich case law on equality and the right to …

Middle East & North Africa Coverage, Human Rights Brief

Human Rights Brief Spring 2019 Regional Coverage

No abstract provided.

The Inescapable Intersection Of Race, Law, And Sports: Perspectives From The Field, N. Jeremi Duru, Michele Roberts, Woodie Dixon, Jeff Whitney

Presentations

During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, race and sport were thickly intertwined. Athletes such as Arthur Ashe, Muhammad Ali, John Carlos, and Tommie Smith used their platforms as sports stars to challenge racial and economic injustice. In the decades that followed, that activist spirit largely receded, but over the past several years athlete activism has been on the rise. From Miami Heat players posting a group photo in hooded sweatshirts in protest of Trayvon Martin’s killing to St. Louis Rams’ players running onto the field with hands above their heads in protest of Michael Brown’s killing to Colin …

Sexual Exploitation And Abuse In Conflict: An International Crime?, Clare Brown

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Epitaph For Pardon Based On The Purpose Of Punishment, Eva Carracedo Carrasco

Criminal Law Practitioner

No abstract provided.

Nolo Contendere Convictions: The Effect Of No Confession In Future Criminal Proceedings, Ramy Simpson

Criminal Law Practitioner

No abstract provided.