Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Human Rights Law (25)
- Military, War, and Peace (17)
- Organizations Law (14)
- International Law (13)
- Criminal Law (12)
-
- Courts (6)
- International Humanitarian Law (6)
- Law and Gender (4)
- Rule of Law (4)
- Immigration Law (3)
- Legal Remedies (3)
- Litigation (2)
- Comparative and Foreign Law (1)
- Evidence (1)
- Law and Philosophy (1)
- Law and Psychology (1)
- Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility (1)
- Legal History (1)
- National Security Law (1)
- Science and Technology Law (1)
- Supreme Court of the United States (1)
- Publication Year
Articles 1 - 30 of 35
Full-Text Articles in Law
Justice In Syria: Individual Criminal Liability For Highest Officials In The Assad Regime, Seema Kassab
Justice In Syria: Individual Criminal Liability For Highest Officials In The Assad Regime, Seema Kassab
Michigan Journal of International Law
Seven years have passed since revolution broke out in Syria in March of 2011. During those six years, hundreds of thousands of Syrians lost their lives, millions of Syrians were internally displaced or left the country seeking refuge, and a beautiful and diverse country was hijacked and terrorized by civil war. Every day in Syria, people are detained, tortured, raped, and killed. Attacks on homes, hospitals, markets, and schools are common occurrences. At this stage of the conflict, there is little doubt that it is the most horrific and dire humanitarian crisis since World War II. The conflict began as …
After Atrocity: Optimizing Un Action Toward Accountability For Human Rights Abuses, Steven R. Ratner
After Atrocity: Optimizing Un Action Toward Accountability For Human Rights Abuses, Steven R. Ratner
Michigan Journal of International Law
It is a great honor for me to be here to deliver the John Humphrey Lecture. Humphrey led one of those lives within the UN that shaped what the organization has become today—as one of the first generation of UN civil servants, he was to human rights what Ralph Bunche was to peacekeeping, or Brian Urquhart to UN mediation. To read his diaries, so beautifully edited by John Hobbins, is to see a world that has in many ways vanished, a nearly entirely male club, mostly of Westerners, that hammered out new treaties and mechanisms over fine wine and cigars …
From Prosecutorial To Reparatory: A Valuable Post-Conflict Change Of Focus, Nancy A. Combs
From Prosecutorial To Reparatory: A Valuable Post-Conflict Change Of Focus, Nancy A. Combs
Michigan Journal of International Law
The ICC is well known in international legal circles. Indeed, everyone who knows anything about international law knows that the ICC is the acronym for the International Criminal Court, the body charged with prosecuting international crimes around the globe. Created in 2002, the ICC was intended to “put an end to impunity” for the perpetrators of international crimes” and to affirm “that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished.”1 Imagine, however, a world where the “ICC” instead was an acronym for the International Compensation Court. That is, what if the …
Inciting Genocide With Words, Richard A. Wilson
Inciting Genocide With Words, Richard A. Wilson
Michigan Journal of International Law
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, observers emphasized the role of media propaganda in inciting Rwandan Hutus to attack the Tutsi minority group, with one claiming that the primary tools of genocide were “the radio and the machete.” As a steady stream of commentators referred to “radio genocide” and “death by radio” and “the soundtrack to genocide,” a widespread consensus emerged that key responsibility for the genocide lay with the Rwandan media. Mathias Ruzindana, prosecution expert witness at the ICTR, supports this notion, writing, “In the case of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the effect of language was lethal . …
Experiments In International Criminal Justice: Lessons From The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, John D. Ciorciari, Anne Heindel
Experiments In International Criminal Justice: Lessons From The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, John D. Ciorciari, Anne Heindel
Michigan Journal of International Law
Important experiments in international criminal justice have been taking place at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC or Court), a tribunal created by the United Nations and Cambodian Government to adjudicate some of the most egregious crimes of the Pol Pot era.2 The tribunal opened its doors in 2006, and although its work continues, its first seven years of operations provide an opportunity to evaluate its performance and judge the extent to which legal and institutional experiments at the ECCC have been successful to date. This Article will show that, in general, the ECCC’s most unique and …
Humanity And National Security: The Law Of Mass Atrocity Response Operations, Keith A. Petty
Humanity And National Security: The Law Of Mass Atrocity Response Operations, Keith A. Petty
Michigan Journal of International Law
Among the greatest threats to global security is the slaughter of civilians. This is due to the inconsistent reaction of the international community to genocide and other atrocity crimes. Whether it was the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Turkey in 1915 or Rwandan Tutsis in 1994, mass murderers act with impunity when there is not a forceful response. Contrast these situations to Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia in 1978 that put an end to the Khmer Rouge’s nightmarish killing fields, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) intervention in Kosovo in 1999 that protected ethnic Albanians from Serb …
She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl
She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl
Michigan Journal of International Law
In the nearly twenty years since 1994, the international community and the Rwandan government have pushed to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the genocide. Judicialization has occurred at multiple levels. Over ninety persons-those deemed most responsible-have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), an ad hoc institution established by the U.N. Security Council in November 1994. Approximately ten thousand individuals have been prosecuted in specialized chambers of national courts in Rwanda. According to the Rwandan government, nearly two million people have faced neo-traditional gacaca proceedings conducted by elected lay judges throughout the country. Gacaca proceedings concluded in …
The Michigan Guidelines On The Exclusion Of International Criminals
The Michigan Guidelines On The Exclusion Of International Criminals
Michigan Journal of International Law
With a view to promoting a shared understanding of the proper approach to Article 1(F)(a) exclusion from refugee status, we have engaged in sustained collaborative study and reflection on relevant norms and state practice. Our research was debated and refined at the Sixth Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law, convened in March 2013 by the University of Michigan’s Program in Refugee and Asylum Law. These Guidelines are the product of that endeavor, and reflect the consensus of Colloquium participants on how decision makers can best ensure the application of Article 1(F)(a) in a manner that conforms to international legal …
Principled Exclusion: A Revised Approach To Article1(F)(A) Of The Refugee Convention, Jennifer Bond
Principled Exclusion: A Revised Approach To Article1(F)(A) Of The Refugee Convention, Jennifer Bond
Michigan Journal of International Law
The focus of this contribution is Article 1(F)(a), a section of the exclusion clause that has increased in both use and profile in recent years. Article 1(F)(a) applies to individuals who may be implicated in crimes against peace (more commonly known today as crimes of aggression), war crimes, or crimes against humanity as such crimes are defined in relevant international instruments. Where a decision maker finds that “there are serious reasons for considering that” an asylum seeker has committed one of these acts, the remainder of the Refugee Convention does not apply, and any protections to which the claimant would …
Is The Prosecution Of War Crimes Just And Effective? Rethinking The Lessons From Sociology And Psychology, Ziv Bohrer
Is The Prosecution Of War Crimes Just And Effective? Rethinking The Lessons From Sociology And Psychology, Ziv Bohrer
Michigan Journal of International Law
Should perpetrators of genocide, violent acts against civilians during war, or other massive violations of core human rights be punished? International criminal law (ICL) answers this question affirmatively, asserting that the punishment of such atrocities is just and that their effective prosecution can (and should) contribute to the prevention of such future acts. Moreover, an increasing attempt has been made in the international and domestic arenas to act in accordance with these assertions of ICL through the prosecution of war crimes. During the last two decades the role of ICL has become gradually more significant, and the fall of the …
Victim Participation At The International Criminal Court And The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: A Feminist Project, Susana Sacouto
Victim Participation At The International Criminal Court And The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: A Feminist Project, Susana Sacouto
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
The question this Article poses is whether victim participation--one of the most recent developments in international criminal law--has increased the visibility of the actual lived experience of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in the context of war, mass violence, or repression. Under the Rome Statute, victims of the world's most serious crimes were given unprecedented rights to participate in proceedings before the Court. Nearly a decade later, a similar scheme was established to allow victims to participate as civil parties in the proceedings before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC or Extraordinary Chambers), a court created …
Special Court For Sierra Leone: Achieving Justice?, Charles Chernor Jalloh
Special Court For Sierra Leone: Achieving Justice?, Charles Chernor Jalloh
Michigan Journal of International Law
The creation of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL or the Court) in early 2002 generated high expectations within the international community. The SCSL was generally deemed to herald a new model or benchmark for the assessment of future ad hoc international criminal courts. As the Court completes the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor in The Hague-its last-nine years later, this Article offers an early and broad assessment of whether it has fulfilled its promise. More specifically, this Article examines whether the SCSL has achieved, or more accurately-because its trials are still ongoing-whether it is achieving justice. …
Liberal Legal Norms Meet Collective Criminality, John D. Ciorciari
Liberal Legal Norms Meet Collective Criminality, John D. Ciorciari
Michigan Law Review
International criminal law ("ICL") tends to focus on the same question asked by the Cambodian survivor above: who was ultimately most responsible? Focusing on the culpability of senior leaders has powerful appeal. It resonates with a natural human tendency to personify misdeeds and identify a primary locus for moral blame. It also serves political ends by putting a face on mass crimes, decapitating the old regime, and leaving room for reconciliation at lower levels. But what happens when smoking guns do not point clearly toward high-ranking officials? And how can the law address the fact that most atrocities are committed …
An Emerging Norm - Determining The Meaning And Legal Status Of The Responsibility To Protect, Jonah Eaton
An Emerging Norm - Determining The Meaning And Legal Status Of The Responsibility To Protect, Jonah Eaton
Michigan Journal of International Law
The responsibility to protect, from its recent nativity in the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), is the latest round in an old debate pitting the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of states against allowing such intervention to prevent gross and systematic violations of human rights. Advocates for the concept see it as an important new commitment by the international community, injecting new meaning into the tragically threadbare promise to never again allow mass atrocities to occur unchallenged. ICISS offered the concept of responsibility to protect as a new way to confront …
Designing Bespoke Transitional Justice: A Pluralist Process Approach, Jaya Ramji-Nogales
Designing Bespoke Transitional Justice: A Pluralist Process Approach, Jaya Ramji-Nogales
Michigan Journal of International Law
Although many scholars agree that contemporary transitional justice mechanisms are flawed, a comprehensive and unified alternative approach to accountability for mass violence has yet to be propounded. Like many international lawyers, transitional justice theorists have focused their assessment efforts on the successes and failures of established institutions. This Article argues that before we can measure whether transitional justice is working, we must begin with a theory of what it is trying to achieve. Once we have a coherent theory, we must use it ex ante, to design effective transitional justice mechanisms, not just to assess their effectiveness ex post. Drawing …
Failures To Punish: Command Responsibility In Domestic And International Law, Amy J. Sepinwall
Failures To Punish: Command Responsibility In Domestic And International Law, Amy J. Sepinwall
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article embraces one of two contested understandings of what a failure to punish entails. On the first understanding, a military commander's failure to punish is construed solely as a dereliction of duty. Accordingly, his failure to punish constitutes a separate offense from the underlying atrocity that his troops have committed. The failure to punish is, then, a substantive offense in its own right. On a second understanding, for which I argue here, the failure to punish renders the commander criminally liable for the atrocity itself, even if he neither ordered nor even knew about the atrocity before its occurrence. …
Rape At Rome: Feminist Interventions In The Criminalization Of Sex-Related Violence In Positive International Criminal Law, Janet Halley
Rape At Rome: Feminist Interventions In The Criminalization Of Sex-Related Violence In Positive International Criminal Law, Janet Halley
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article examines the work of organized feminism in the formation of new international criminal tribunals over the course of the 1990s. It focuses on the statutes establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the International Criminal Court (ICC). It offers a description of the evolving organizational style of feminists involved in the legislative processes leading to the establishment of these courts, and a description of their reform agenda read against the outcomes in each court-establishing statute. At each stage, the Article counts up the feminist victories and defeats, …
Settler's Remorse, Floyd Abrams
Settler's Remorse, Floyd Abrams
Michigan Law Review
Who can quarrel with the notion that settling civil cases is generally a good thing? Litigation is expensive, time-consuming, preoccupying, and often personally destructive. Our courts are overburdened and, in any event, imperfect decision-making entities. It may even be true that, more often than not, "the absolute result of a trial is not as high a quality of justice as is the freely negotiated, give a little, take a little settlement." But not every case should be settled. Many are worthless. The settlement of others could too easily lead to a torrent of unwarranted litigation. Sometimes, as Professor Owen Fiss …
Science, Humanity, And Atrocity: A Lawyerly Examination, Steven D. Smith
Science, Humanity, And Atrocity: A Lawyerly Examination, Steven D. Smith
Michigan Law Review
Joseph Vining's reflection on (as the subtitle indicates) the claims of science and humanity begins with a terse but disturbing recitation of these and similar scientific experiments conducted on human beings during the twentieth century in Manchuria, Nazi Germany, and Pol Pot's Cambodia. The incidents are conveyed through quotations, sometimes of the coldly clinical prose that the researchers themselves chose as most suitable for their purposes. These quotations are juxtaposed against others from an array of distinguished scientists and philosophers explaining the naturalistic cosmology that, in the view of these thinkers, modern science has given us: it is a stark, …
From Indifference To Engagement: Bystanders And International Criminal Justice, Laurel E. Fletcher
From Indifference To Engagement: Bystanders And International Criminal Justice, Laurel E. Fletcher
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article contributes to the scholarship on transitional justice by examining how the legal architecture and operation of international criminal law constricts bystanders as subjects of jurisprudence, considering the effects of this limitation on the ability of international tribunals to promote their social and political goals, and proposing institutional reforms needed to address this limitation.
Is Poetry A War Crime? Reckoning For Radovan Karadzic The Poet-Warrior, Jay Surdukowski
Is Poetry A War Crime? Reckoning For Radovan Karadzic The Poet-Warrior, Jay Surdukowski
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Note will suggest that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) can use Karadzic's texts and affectations to warrior poetry in the pretrial brief and in admitted evidence, if and when Karadzic ultimately appears for trial. The violent nationalism of radio broadcasts, political journals, speeches, interviews, and manifestos have been fair game for the Office of the Prosecutor to make their cases in the last decade in both the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals. Why should poetry, perhaps the most powerful maker of myth and in the Yugoslavia context, a great mover …
Is Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention Compatible With The U.N. Charter?, Petr Valek
Is Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention Compatible With The U.N. Charter?, Petr Valek
Michigan Journal of International Law
The main topic of this Note is the compatibility of unilateral humanitarian intervention with Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter (the Charter). Through its interpretation, the author will attempt to discover whether the Grotian idea of unilateral humanitarian intervention can survive in the environment of contemporary international law without its "just war appendix." This Note will separate this idea from its "just war justification" and approach the question of the compatibility of such intervention with the Charter as a legal positivist. In the interpretation of Article 2(4) of the Charter, this Note will try to avoid moral principles. Instead, it …
Sexual Violence As Genocide: The Developing Law Of The International Criminal Tribunals And The International Criminal Court, Jonathan M.H. Short
Sexual Violence As Genocide: The Developing Law Of The International Criminal Tribunals And The International Criminal Court, Jonathan M.H. Short
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This note will explore the treatment of the two primary violent sexual acts, rape and forced pregnancy, in modern international criminal law; more specifically in its treatment as genocide. The woman as an individual is the primary sufferer of sexual violence during armed conflict, however sexual violence is a calculated means by which perpetrators seek to destroy an entire ethnic group. Sexual violence is both an attack against the woman and an attack against the ethnic group, and should be prosecuted as such. While crimes against individuals are best prosecuted as crimes against humanity or under domestic law, crimes committed …
The Promise Of A Post-Genocide Constitution: Healing Rwandan Spirit Injuries, Adrien Katherine Wing, Mark Richard Johnson
The Promise Of A Post-Genocide Constitution: Healing Rwandan Spirit Injuries, Adrien Katherine Wing, Mark Richard Johnson
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article hopes to extend Critical Race Theory's social construction of race theory by emphasizing ethnicity as well as race. The Rwandans are undoubtedly within the so-called "Black race." Historically, they have also been socially constructed as consisting of different races and ethnicities, even though many scholars and Rwandans do not see ethnic, much less racial, distinctions. Some of these Rwandans who did see such differences participated in the genocide.
Truth As Right And Remedy In International Human Rights Experience, Thomas M. Antkowiak
Truth As Right And Remedy In International Human Rights Experience, Thomas M. Antkowiak
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Note seeks to explore the origins, scope, and key possibilities of an evolving right to the truth. It will argue that truth is not only an essential component of the universally recognized "right to an effective remedy," but that it also serves as the gateway to a broader reparative framework necessary for victims of gross human rights abuse. The analysis shall span the Inter-American, European, and United Nations systems of human rights protection, and also will treat the burgeoning idea of the truth commission, a very prominent means of extra-judicial inquiry in contemporary transitional societies. At the conclusion, the …
The Promise Of Truth Commissions In Times Of Transition, Mariah Jackson Christensen
The Promise Of Truth Commissions In Times Of Transition, Mariah Jackson Christensen
Michigan Journal of International Law
Review of Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity by Priscilla B. Hayner
Rush To Closure: Lessons Of The Tadić Judgment, Jose E. Alvarez
Rush To Closure: Lessons Of The Tadić Judgment, Jose E. Alvarez
Michigan Law Review
In 1993 and 1994, following allegations of mass atrocities, including systematic killings, rapes, and other horrific forms of violence in Rwanda and the territories of the former Yugoslavia, two ad hoc international war crimes tribunals were established to prosecute individuals for grave violations of international humanitarian law, including genocide. As might be expected, advocates for the creation of these entities - the first international courts to prosecute individuals under international law since the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II - aspired to grand goals inspired by, but extending far beyond, the pedestrian aims of ordinary criminal prosecutions. …
The Right To Return Under International Law Following Mass Dislocation: The Bosnia Precedent?, Eric Rosand
The Right To Return Under International Law Following Mass Dislocation: The Bosnia Precedent?, Eric Rosand
Michigan Journal of International Law
On the night of May 2, 1997, some twenty-five abandoned Serb houses were set on fire in the Croat-controlled municipality of Drvar, part of the Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was clear from all the circumstances that Croats organized the arson of houses in Drvar to obstruct the return of the original Serb residents to the area. Croat authorities then made a concerted effort to resettle displaced Croats in Drvar in order to solidify a stretch of "ethnically-pure" territory adjacent to the Republic of Croatia. These displaced Bosnian Serbs are just a few of the estimated 2.3 million …
A Human Rights Exception To Sovereign Immunity: Some Thoughts On Princz V. Federal Republic Of Germany, Mathias Reimann
A Human Rights Exception To Sovereign Immunity: Some Thoughts On Princz V. Federal Republic Of Germany, Mathias Reimann
Michigan Journal of International Law
Though narrow in scope, this article is emphatic in its message. It is time to deny immunity to foreign sovereigns for torture, genocide, or enslavement, at least when they are sued by Americans in American courts. Such a denial would be consonant with two developments that have marked international law since World War II: the restriction of sovereign immunity and the expansion of human rights protection.
Sovereign Immunity And Violations Of International Jus Cogens - Some Critical Remarks, Andreas Zimmermann
Sovereign Immunity And Violations Of International Jus Cogens - Some Critical Remarks, Andreas Zimmermann
Michigan Journal of International Law
The scope of this article, like the one to which it responds, is limited. It does not purport to resolve any question relating to the municipal law of the United States, such as the interpretation of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Instead, it considers the problem from a purely international law perspective. Furthermore, it does not indulge in a complete description of attempts made by the Federal Republic of Germany to pay compensation - as far as feasible - for all the blatant human rights violations committed by Nazi Germany in the period 1933-1945.