Law Commons^™

Towards A New Transitional Justice Model: Assessing The Serbian Case, Roozbeh (Rudy) B. Baker

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article will survey the key episodes of transitional justice in various countries since the 1970s, and then apply the lessons gleaned to the transition of Serbia during the first five years following the deposition of authoritarian ruler Slobodan Milosevic in October 200, and the subsequent establishment of democratic rule...This article will show that the empirical evidence demonstrates that the outcome of the transitional justice process a country undertakes, upon its political stability, needs to be taken into account when fashioning said process.

Atrocity Crimes Litigation: 2008 Year-In-Review, Beth Van Schaack

Faculty Publications

This survey of 2008's top developments in these international fora will focus on the law governing international crimes and applicable forms of responsibility. Several trends in the law are immediately apparent. The tribunals continue to delineate and clarify the interfaces between the various international crimes, particularly war crimes and crimes against humanity, which may be committed simultaneously or in parallel with each other. Several important cases went to judgment in 2008 that address war crimes drawn from the Hague tradition of international humanitarian law, and the international courts are demonstrating a greater facility for adjudicating highly technical aspects of this …

Much Ado About Non-State Actors: The Vanishing Relevance Of State Affiliation In International Criminal Law, John Cerone

San Diego International Law Journal

Much has been made recently of the deficiencies of international law in grappling with violence perpetrated by non-state actors. From transnational terrorist networks to private security contractors (PSCs), organizations that are not officially part of the apparatus of any state are increasingly engaged in protracted episodes of intense violence, giving rise to questions of accountability under international law. Does international law provide rules applicable to such conduct? While the repression of crime, especially that perpetrated by non-state actors, has traditionally been left to the internal law of states, most international jurists will point to the ancient rules of international law …

Stopping The Killing And/Or Stopping Human Rights Violations, Edward Friedman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The relationship between promoting human rights and stopping wars can be perplexing. The 19th century origins of the Geneva Convention and the International Commissions of the Red Cross (ICRC) are warnings about the moral danger, ambiguities, or tensions of bringing war within the arena of human rights considerations. Human rights and war can be a toxic cocktail. One should not want to make war more likely or legitimate or deadly by seeming to say that the killing machine on one side or the other is acting humanely, as if that makes war okay. War is hell.

Universal Jurisdiction And The Case Of Belgium: A Critical Assessment, Roozbeh (Rudy) B. Baker

Roozbeh (Rudy) B. Baker

Praised in some quarters as a useful tool for bringing criminal perpetrators to justice, criticized by others as a threat to state sovereignty, universal jurisdiction has certainly emerged as a heated topic within international criminal law. In 1993, the Kingdom of Belgium enacted a domestic statute, the Loi du 16 Juin, which codified (in domestic Belgian law) the use and application of universal jurisdiction (for international crimes) in Belgian courts. The Statute, which went through two major revisions in February 1999 and April 2003, granted Belgian courts jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, regardless of where in …

Towards A New Transitional Justice Model: Assessing The Serbian Case, Roozbeh (Rudy) B. Baker

Roozbeh (Rudy) B. Baker

Given the “third wave” of democratic development and entrenchment that has taken hold around the world within the past three decades, the topic of how these transitioning societies cope with the legacy of atrocity and criminality that often accompany authoritarian rule has taken on a fresh salience. The structural, ethical, legal, and political problems faced during such transitions have become the topic of a burgeoning “transitional justice” sub-field within the fields of Law and Political Science. This Article will survey key episodes of transitional justice in various countries since the 1970s, and then apply the lessons gleaned to the transition …

Book Review, Victor Peskin, International Justice In Rwanda And The Balkans: Virtual Trials And The Struggle For State Cooperation (2008), Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Implementation of the law requires strategic cooperation. No surprise there: It does so even in the most taut domestic polity. Law is intrinsically contingent. And political. But what does the particularly acute dependency of international criminal law on political cooperation teach us about its pertinence? Its promise? Its limits? It is one thing to assess the functionality of international criminal law. It is another to gauge the value of international criminal law, when actuated through adversarial trials, in reconstituting shattered communities; and its effectiveness as a tool of transitional justice. At its core, Virtual Trials is an analysis about functionality. …

International Justice And International Politics: Intertwined Paths, David Penna

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

International Justice in Rwanda and the Balkans: Virtual Trials and the Struggle for State Cooperation. By Victor Peskin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 272 pp.

and

Building the International Criminal Court. By Benjamin N. Schiff. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 304 pp.

and

The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II. By Yuma Totani. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center / Harvard University Press, 2008. 335 pp.

The Limits Of International Humanitarian Law, Melissa Eli

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The goal of international humanitarian law is to humanize war in an effort to minimize human suffering and the long-term negative consequences of war. However, despite the adoption by most countries of the Geneva Conventions and other relevant agreements, crimes of war occur in every conflict around the world on a regular basis. Additionally, as the form of warfare changes, so does the implementation and consequences of various war crimes. Genocide, systematic rape, and the use of child soldiers are three of the most significant war crimes facing sub-Saharan Africa today. Each has consequences so severe that specific international laws …

Dissertation On The Prosecution And The Trial Of Heads Of State Under International Law: The Case Of Slobodan Milosevic And Charles Ghankay Taylor, Julia A. Shilunga

Theses and Dissertations

In the past, the responsibility of head of State and of Government was national competence. There were no international rules which established their responsibilities in international law. If they committed crimes, this remained exclusively the matter of the State and if there was the responsibility for the wrong behavior, it was the responsibility of the States themselves and not of the leaders as persons.

It was only very slowly that the State leaders started to be called to responsibility. One of the first attempts, which failed, was the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which wanted to prosecute the German Emperor. The …