Law Commons^™

Judicialization Of Election Disputes In Africa's International Courts, James Thuo Gathii, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article assesses what benefit losers of high-stakes national elections think they will get from petitioning international courts in Africa. We seek to establish how judicial intervention differs before an election when there is a risk of an international law violation, versus after an election has occurred and the result is viewed as flawed. We address these questions by drawing on a set of disputes decided by international courts in Africa in the African Court, the Economic Community of West African States (“ECOWAS”) Community Court of Justice, and the East African Court of Justice. We supplement our analysis by discussing …

Post-Genocide Justice In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The Rwandan genocide triggered a vast number of criminal and quasi-criminal prosecutions. Rwanda therefore constitutes an example of a robust and rapid implementation of criminal accountability for atrocity. Rwanda, moreover, departed from other countries – such as South Africa – by eschewing a truth and reconciliation process as part of a transitional justice process. This chapter unpacks three levels of judicialization that promoted criminal responsibility for atrocity in Rwanda: the ICTR, specialized chambers of national courts, and gacaca proceedings. The ICTR indicted roughly 90 individuals, the national courts convicted in the area of 10,000 defendants (with some proceedings remaining ongoing), …

Opposing International Justice: Kenya’S Integrated Backlash Strategy Against The Icc, Laurence R. Helfer, Anne E. Showalter

Faculty Scholarship

The government of Kenya has employed a wide range of strategies to undermine the recently-dismissed prosecutions of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto before the International Criminal Court (ICC). This Article argues that these strategies are part of an integrated backlash campaign against the ICC, one that encompasses seemingly unrelated actions in multiple global, regional and national venues. We identify three overarching themes that connect these diverse measures— politicizing complementarity, regionalizing political opposition, and pairing instances of cooperation and condemnation to diffuse accusations of impunity. By linking its discrete acts of opposition to these three themes, the government …

The Human Rights Of Sea Pirates: Will The European Court Of Human Rights Decisions Get More Killed?, Barry Hart Dubner, Brian Othero

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A New International Human Rights Court For West Africa: The Ecowas Community Court Of Justice, Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, Jacqueline R. Mcallister

Jacqueline McAllister

The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (ECCJ) is an increasingly active and bold international adjudicator of human rights violations in West Africa. Since acquiring jurisdiction over human rights issues in 2005, the ECCJ has issued several path-breaking judgments, including against the Gambia for the torture of journalists, against Niger for condoning modern forms of slavery, and against Nigeria for failing to regulate the multinational oil companies that polluted the Niger Delta. This article explains why ECOWAS member states authorized the ECCJ to review human rights suits by individuals but did not allow private actors to complain about violations of regional …

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 …

A New International Human Rights Court For West Africa: The Ecowas Community Court Of Justice, Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, Jacqueline R. Mcallister

Faculty Scholarship

The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (ECCJ) is an increasingly active and bold international adjudicator of human rights violations in West Africa. Since acquiring jurisdiction over human rights issues in 2005, the ECCJ has issued several path-breaking judgments, including against the Gambia for the torture of journalists, against Niger for condoning modern forms of slavery, and against Nigeria for failing to regulate the multinational oil companies that polluted the Niger Delta. This article explains why ECOWAS member states authorized the ECCJ to review human rights suits by individuals but did not allow private actors to complain about violations of regional …

Adr And A Smile: Neocolonialism And The West's Newest Export In Africa, Anthony P. Greco

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

While the ills of the West's corporatization of the world have long been debated and catalogued, often neglected is the role the law plays in empowering the rich, disenfranchising the poor, and serving as the "handmaiden to empire." Since what has been termed the "rule of law revival," which saw its genesis sometime in the late 1980s, the adoption of Western legal frameworks to help developing and Third World nations transition and gain access to the ever growing global market has become commonplace. With the coming of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) revolution during the last few decades, the West …

Choosing To Prosecute: Expressive Selection At The International Criminal Court, Margaret M. Deguzman

Michigan Journal of International Law

The International Criminal Court (ICC), an institution in its infancy, has had occasion to make only a relatively small number of decisions about which defendants and which crimes to prosecute. But virtually every choice it has made has been attacked: the first defendant, Thomas Lubanga, was not senior enough and the crimes with which he was charged-war crimes involving the use of child soldiers-were not serious enough; the Court should have investigated British soldiers for war crimes committed in Iraq; the ICC should not be prosecuting only rebel perpetrators in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo; the Court's focus …

Slides: Forests And Grasslands, Federico Cheever

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

Presenter: Professor Federico Cheever, University of Denver Sturm College of Law

30 slides

Establishing A Precedent In Uganda: The Legitimacy Of National Amnesties Under The Icc, Robin B. Murphy

ExpressO

After 14 years of unconscionable wrath against local civilians, including enforced recruitment of thousands of child soldiers, the rebel group The Lord’s Resistance Army (“LRA”) was offered amnesty by the Ugandan government in 2000. However, as the conflict continued unabated, the Ugandan government, for the first time in the history of the Court, referred its case to the International Criminal Court (“ICC”). The ICC Prosecutor announced the beginning of an investigation and issued warrants for seven top LRA officers in October of 2005. The potential ICC prosecution raises many questions about the jurisdiction of the new court, including whether the …

African Courts, International Law, And Comparative Case Law: Chimera Or Emerging Human Rights Jurisprudence?, Mirna E. Adjami

Michigan Journal of International Law

Though the potential creation of a supranational human rights court has brought international attention to the African human rights system, international law and human rights scholars rarely turn to African examples when studying the domestic application of international human rights norms. This Article seeks to fill that gap by analyzing cases from several Anglophone common law countries in sub-Saharan Africa that invoke international law and comparative case law as interpretive support in their national fundamental rights jurisprudence.