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Full-Text Articles in Law
Aiding And Abetting In International Criminal Law, Oona A. Hathaway, Alexandra Francis, Aaron Haviland, Srinath Reddy Kethireddy, Alyssa T. Yamamoto
Aiding And Abetting In International Criminal Law, Oona A. Hathaway, Alexandra Francis, Aaron Haviland, Srinath Reddy Kethireddy, Alyssa T. Yamamoto
Cornell Law Review
To achieve justice for violations of international law such as genocide, torture, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, it is essential to address complicity for international crimes. Beginning in the 1990s, there was a proliferation of international and hybrid criminal tribunals, which sought to hold perpetrators of these crimes accountable and, in turn, generated an explosion of international criminal law jurisprudence. Nonetheless, the contours of aiding and abetting liability in international criminal law remain contested. Courts-both domestic and international-have long struggled to identify the proper legal standard for holding actors liable for aiding and abetting even the most serious violations …
Searching For The Hinterman: In Praise Of Subjective Theories Of Imputation, Jens David Ohlin
Searching For The Hinterman: In Praise Of Subjective Theories Of Imputation, Jens David Ohlin
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
How should international courts distinguish between principals and accessories? The ICC answered this question with Roxin’s Control Theory of Perpetration; defendants should be convicted as principals if they control the crime individually, jointly with a co-perpetrator, indirectly via an organized apparatus of power, or as indirect co-perpetrators (via a combination of the previous doctrines). As the ICC adopted the control requirement, however, some of its decisions have allowed lower mental states such as recklessness or dolus eventualis to meet the standard for principal perpetration under the Control Theory. Other decisions have asserted that intent or knowledge is required though their …
Assessing The Control-Theory, Jens David Ohlin, Elies Van Sliedregt, Thomas Weigend
Assessing The Control-Theory, Jens David Ohlin, Elies Van Sliedregt, Thomas Weigend
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
As the first cases before the ICC proceed to the Appeals Chamber, the judges ought to critically evaluate the merits and demerits of the control-theory of perpetratorship and its related doctrines. The request for a possible re-characterization of the form of responsibility in the case of Katanga and the recent acquittal of Ngudjolo can be taken as indications that the control-theory, is problematic as a theory of liability. The authors, in a spirit of constructive criticism, invite the ICC Appeals Chamber to take this unique opportunity to reconsider or improve the control-theory as developed by the Pre-Trial Chambers in the …
Is Jus In Bello In Crisis?, Jens David Ohlin
Is Jus In Bello In Crisis?, Jens David Ohlin
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
It is a truism that new technologies are remaking the tactical and legal landscape of armed conflict. While such statements are undoubtedly true, it is important to separate genuine trends from scholarly exaggeration. The following essay, an introduction to the Drone Wars symposium of the Journal, catalogues today’s most pressing disputes regarding international humanitarian law (IHL) and their consequences for criminal responsibility. These include: (i) the triggering and classification of armed conflicts with non-state actors; (ii) the relative scope of IHL and international human rights law in asymmetrical conflicts; (iii) the targeting of suspected terrorists under concept- or status-based classifications …
Universal Jurisdiction Not So Universal: A Time To Delegate To The International Criminal Court, Dalila V. Hoover
Universal Jurisdiction Not So Universal: A Time To Delegate To The International Criminal Court, Dalila V. Hoover
Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers
The exercise of universal jurisdiction in cases involving crimes under international law remains highly debated and underlines a certain number of legal and political issues in its implementation. Because the principle of universal jurisdiction relies on national authorities to enforce international prohibitions, pivotal decisions are expected to reflect, to a greater or lesser extent, domestic decision-makers’ positions as to the interests of justice, the national interest and other criteria. In many States, the legal system lacks the means to investigate or prosecute on the basis of universal jurisdiction. Indeed, many legal systems do not define the term “crimes” that can …
Counterfeit Conspiracy: The Misapplication Of Conspiracy As A Substantive Crime In International Law, Taylor R. Dalton
Counterfeit Conspiracy: The Misapplication Of Conspiracy As A Substantive Crime In International Law, Taylor R. Dalton
Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers
In the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) case Prosecutor v. Musema, the trial chamber held that an individual can be found guilty solely for the crime of conspiracy to commit genocide even if no genocide takes place. The trial chamber found its jurisdiction to punish the crime of conspiracy under its establishing statute, but looks almost exclusively at national legal traditions to determine its content. It cites no other international law supporting its decision to incorporate domestic concepts into the crime. In contrast, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which relatively recently entered into force, seems to …
Undocumented Migrant Workers In A Fragmented International Order, Chantal Thomas
Undocumented Migrant Workers In A Fragmented International Order, Chantal Thomas
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This Paper tries to show the effects of a central challenge of contemporary global governance: the "interaction between normative orders that are fundamentally different in their underlying conceptual structure." The argument is that the dynamics of globalization create and accentuate particular social phenomena as well as efforts towards coordinated regulation of these phenomena, but that the latter are far from sufficient to meet the former. A further assertion is that global relations and distributions of power determine the operation of this fragmented framework. Social vulnerability is reflected in and reinforced by it. As such, the undocumented migrant worker challenges, in …
Joint Criminal Confusion, Jens David Ohlin
Joint Criminal Confusion, Jens David Ohlin
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Article 25 on individual criminal responsibility has generated more conflicting interpretations than any other provision in the Rome Statute. Part of the problem is that it is impossible to construct a coherent and nonredundant interpretation of Article 25(3)(d) on group complicity. Because of unfortunate drafting, both the required contribution and the required mental element are impossible to discern from the inscrutable language. As a result, it is nearly impossible to devise a holistic interpretation of Article 25(3)(d) that fits together with the rest of Article 25 and Article 30 on mental elements. One possible solution is to repair Article 25 …
Three Conceptual Problems With The Doctrine Of Joint Criminal Enterprise, Jens David Ohlin
Three Conceptual Problems With The Doctrine Of Joint Criminal Enterprise, Jens David Ohlin
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This article dissects the Tadic court’s argument for finding the doctrine of joint criminal enterprise in the ICTY Statute. The key arguments are identified and each are found to be either problematic or insufficient to deduce the doctrine from the statute: the object and purpose of the statute to punish major war criminals, the inherently collective nature of war crimes and genocide and the conviction of war criminals for joint enterprises in World War II cases. The author criticizes this overreliance on international case law and the insufficient attention to the language of criminal statutes when interpreting conspiracy doctrines. The …
Reclaiming Fundamental Principles Of Criminal Law In The Darfur Case, George P. Fletcher, Jens David Ohlin
Reclaiming Fundamental Principles Of Criminal Law In The Darfur Case, George P. Fletcher, Jens David Ohlin
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
According to the authors, the Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and the Security Council referral of the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) bring to light two serious deficiencies of the ICC Statute and, more generally, international criminal law: (i) the systematic ambiguity between collective responsibility (i.e. the responsibility of the whole state) and criminal liability of individuals, on which current international criminal law is grounded, and (ii) the failure of the ICC Statute fully to comply with the principle of legality. The first deficiency is illustrated by highlighting the notions of genocide …