Law Commons^™

The Case For Sanctioning State Sponsors Of Genocide Incitement, Henry K. Kopel

Henry K. Kopel

This Article recommends a policy designed to reduce the incidence of genocide, by legislation that would impose sanctions against state sponsors of genocide incitement. Genocide incitement is a crime under the UN Genocide Convention. The goal of sanctioning state sponsors of such incitement is to prevent genocides proactively, before the mass killing starts. Three prominent twentieth-century genocides–those of the European Jews, the Bosnian Muslims, and the Rwandan Tutsi–all were preceded by pervasive and deliberate campaigns of state-sponsored hate incitement. Most if not all genocides are preceded by similar patterns of incitement. Historical studies also show that most of the actual …

Could The Rwandan And Darfur (Sudan) Genocides Have Been Prevented By The International Community? A Postmortem, Ifem E. Orji

Ifem E Orji

The international law principles of sovereignty and territorial jurisdiction of states preclude external interference in a state’s domestic affairs. Shaped by the old agreements among European states in the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648, and copied and modernized in the Charters of the United Nations and many regional organizations, non-interference, in practice, has not worked in many instances. The great powers have always chosen when to, or not to, interfere. As case studies, this article chronicles the events in the Rwandan and Darfur genocides, and concludes that the international community, particularly the super powers of the UN Security Council, seized …

Redefining Terrorism: The Danger Of Misunderstanding The Modern World's Gravest Threat, Jennifer Breedon

Jennifer Breedon

No abstract provided.

The New World Order: Humanitarian Interventions From Kosovo To Libya And Perhaps Syrian?, Ilan Fuchs, Harry Borowski

Ilan Fuchs

The Involvement of NATO forces in the toppling of Libyan longtime dictator Muammar Kaddafi was received with standing ovation in world media. The Libyan dictator was involved in terrorism and in crimes not only against his own people but against citizens of many other countries as well. One question seems to have been overlooked: under what grounds did NATO join an armed non-international conflict? This article will reevaluate the few sources that discuss the issue and offer a model that will help define the ambiguous scenario of humanitarian intervention.

Should Domestic Courts Prosecute Genocide? Examining The Trial Of Efrain Rios Montt, Jillian Blake

Jillian Blake

In a highly publicized 2013 case, Efraín Ríos Montt, the de facto leader of Guatemala from 1982–1983, was ordered to stand trial for genocide in Guatemala for the deaths of at least 1771 Ixil Mayan people during the most violent period of the country’s thirty-six-year-long civil war. The trial was historic; Ríos Montt became the first former head of state to be tried for genocide in his home country. This Article, using the Guatemalan trial as an example, asks: should domestic courts prosecute genocide? The Article argues that domestic prosecution of genocide is not inherently negative or positive, but could …

Speech Along The Atrocity Spectrum, Gregory S. Gordon

Gregory S. Gordon

In the abstract, speech may have much intrinsic value with its power to facilitate democracy, self-actualization, and good will. But, in certain contexts, it can also be quite deleterious, spawning division, ignorance, and hatred. Within the crucible of atrocity, speech may be similarly Janus-faced. Its power to prevent mass violence is indubitable. But its capacity for enabling mass violence is similarly unquestionable. So the issue arises: when and how may speech work for good or ill in relation to atrocity? This Article grapples with that question. And, in doing so, it finds that the relationship between speech and atrocity should …

Illinois, Cook County, Nu Torture, Enslave, Chemical Weapons, Response To State Police Concerns That Concern With Torture,Enslavement, Chemical Weapons Use Is Harassment, James T. Struck

James T Struck

Illinois, Northwestern, Cook County, IIT Torture, Enslave, Genocide, Use chemical weapons against people who are different or have disability- Response to Illinois State Police that concerns with NU, Illinois, Cook County torture is harassment, Asylum Sought to Avoid Illinois Torture. Illinois steals disabled resources to fund Boeing involved in weapons sales, Relevant Law Repealed. All communication would end with enforcement of harassing communications acts as someone may not want communication. CRIMINAL OFFENSES(720 ILCS 135/) Harassing and Obscene Communications Act. (Repealed by P.A. 97-1108)Some of the firsts I have achieved Some libraries have a book called Famous First Facts edited by …

Tracking Genocide: Persecution Of The Karen In Burma, Jay Milbrandt

Jay Milbrandt

For sixty years a civil war has raged in the jungles of Burma. One of the lingering questions asked by human rights advocates and the international community is to what extent war crimes have been committed and whether the actions by the Burma Army amount to genocide. Based on significant data collected in the field over the past decade, this article argues that forced displacement of the Karen ethnic group does arise to the international standard of genocide. Tracking Genocide explores the theory and application of genocidal intent through the inference of a systematic plan to destroy an ethnic group …

Holodomor: Implications On A Neo-Soviet Ukraine, Laura Umetsu

Laura Umetsu

This paper delves behind the Holodomor as genocide, its ties to the lingering tensions between the Ukrainian and Jewish communities, and proposed introduction of its history into modern classrooms.

Emerging From The Shadow Of Nuremberg: Crimes Against Humanity In The Modern Age, Leila N. Sadat

Leila N Sadat

This Article demonstrates the central importance of Crimes Against Humanity (CAH) prosecutions at the ad hoc international criminal tribunals and in the International Criminal Court (ICC). It represents the first comprehensive and empirical assessment of what CAH charges accomplish as a matter of observable practice. This empirical analysis informs the construction of a new theory of CAH in modern international criminal law. The Article analyzes the early jurisprudence of the ICC and challenges the conventional wisdom that CAH must be interpreted unduly restrictively, with reference to Nuremberg in mind. Instead, CAH at the world’s first permanent international criminal court must …

Clarifying Genocidal Intent: A New Interpretive Doctrine, David Phillips

David Phillips

The ulterior intent provision of the international crime of genocide is the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. This special intent clause is the hallmark of genocide, yet it lacks uniform understanding and universality. Consequently, it has drawn interpretations across the mens rea spectrum, including dolus directus, dolus indirectus, and the broader notion of dolus eventualis. It shall be the aim of this essay to clarify genocidal intent and propound a clear and understandable interpretive doctrine, in the absence of which genocide will remain perennially susceptible to divergent interpretations. …

Stoney Road Out Of Eden: The Struggle To Recover Insurance For Armenian Genocide Deaths And Its Implications For The Future Of State Authority, Contract Rights, And Human Rights, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Jeffrey W Stempel

The Armenian Genocide during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire continues to represent one of history’s underappreciated atrocities. Comparatively few people even know about the 1.5 million deaths or the government-sponsored extermination attempt that provided Hitler with a blueprint for the Nazi Holocaust. Unlike the Holocaust, however, there was never any accounting demanded of those responsible for the Armenian Genocide. In the aftermath of both tragedies, insurers seized upon the resulting disarray and victimization to deny life insurance benefits owed as a result of the killings. American-based litigation to vindicate rights under the Armenian polices faced substantial legal and …

Bureaucracy And The U.S. Response To Mass Atrocity, Gregory Brazeal

Gregory Brazeal

The U.S. response to mass atrocity has followed a predictable pattern of disbelief, rationalization, evasion, and retrospective expressions of regret. The pattern is consistent enough that we should be skeptical of chalking up the United States’ failures solely to a shifting array of isolated historical contingencies, from post-Vietnam fatigue in the case of the Khmer Rouge to the Clinton administration’s recoil against humanitarian interventions after Somalia. It is implausible to suggest that the United States would have acted to mitigate or end mass atrocities but for the specific historical contingencies that happen to accompany each outbreak of violence. This essay …

“The World Must Know What Happened, And Never Forget,” Dwight David Eisenhower, Control Of Masturbation, Missiles, Weapons, And The Holocaust-How Control Of Difference In One Region Can Affect The Whole World, James T. Struck

James T Struck

The world must know what happened here and never forget was Eisenhower's gift to us on seeing the Nazi death camps. Such a policy of telling the world about something can be wonderful to let us understand the world better and horrible in bringing more parties into an action without need. Still, National Socialists stated that they imitated US disability and prison experimentation in Illinois. Telling the whole world about the Holocaust includes telling the whole world about US disability discrimination. Control of masturbation led to sterilization policies throughout the US and expanded into control of difference within National Socialist …

Genocide And Restitution: Ensuring Each Group's Contribution To Humanity, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

The protection of minorities in modern international law is intimately connected with and fueled the recognition of the crimes of persecution and genocide. Minority protection represented the proactive component of the international efforts to ensure the contribution of certain groups to the cultural heritage of humankind. Prohibition and prosecution of persecution and genocide represented the reactive element of these same efforts. The restitution of cultural property to persecuted groups by the international community was recognition that their ownership and control of these physical manifestations was necessary for the realization of this purpose.

In this paper, I consider the emergence, contraction …

The Crime Of Genocide In The New Turkish Penal Code, Mahmut Koca

Mahmut Koca

In this article, the crime of genocide which is defined in the Art. 76 of Turkish Penal Code, is examined. Genocide has been considered as the most serious crime which concerns the whole mankind by international law. Despite this character of the crime, humanity has witnessed the incidents of genocide in Germany, Bosnia and Ruanda in the last century. The incidents experienced during the WWII had forced the international community to act jointly, hence the United Nations General Assembly adopted the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” on December 9, 1948. On the other hand, …

Guardianship As Genocide And Slavery And How Freedom Of Information Can Let Others Know If Persons Are Losing Rights In Certain States, James T. Struck

James T Struck

Guardianship May Be Like Slavery or Genocide as Guardians are Given Rights to Decide For Persons in Certain States or Nations and the Persons are Denied Rights to decide. Freedom of Information Act Programs Allow Other Nations or States to Know If Their Citizens or Persons of Their Ancestry are Being Held Without Rights Under Guardianship. Some Nations or States Have FOIA Programs While Others Probably Do Not Have Such Right to request records.

A Kind Of Judgment: Searching For Judicial Narratives After Death, Timothy W. Waters

Timothy W Waters

This Article is a work of original research interrogating the relationship between international criminal law and post-conflict reconciliation. Much of international criminal law’s attraction rests on the authoritative narrative theory: the claim that law’s authoritative judgments create incontestable narratives, which form the foundation for reconciliation in divided societies. So what happens when there is no judgment? By turning scholarship’s attention towards a terminated trial, this Article develops an indirect but powerful challenge to one of the dominant views about what international criminal law is for, with interdisciplinary implications for international law, international relations, diplomacy and political science. What can be …

Defining The Protected Groups In The Law Of Genocide: Learning From The Experience Of The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda, Alison Hopkins

InfraRead: Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies Online Supplement

This article addresses the definitional problems inherent in the crime of genocide, particularly with respect to the identification of protected groups. It examines the criteria for protection, and the perspective to be used in applying the criteria.

Illinois Probate Law And Guardians Could Be Violating Convention On Genocide, James T. Struck

James T Struck

Illinois could be violating Genocide Conventions by taking away rights of disabled and different. Illinois Guardians, some health care institutions or Cook County Guardian may take away your rights and resources when you come to Illinois or other places, so some warning about loss of rights/resources may be helpful. Illinois advertises that it has the largest state guardianship system in the US on their guardianship and advocacy site (2009 information). See the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." “Article 2 In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to …

One Spark Can Set A Fire: The Role Of Intent In Incitement To Genocide, Kate Kovarovic

Kate Kovarovic

The world was introduced to an entirely new method of warfare during World War II: that which was fought with words. Hitler mastered the art of media manipulation, and the world struggled to overcome his capacity to influence the German people. After the war, the international community felt compelled to restrict the type of conduct that had enabled Hitler to so easily gain control of his audiences. However, legal scholars struggled to balance this need with the protection of free speech. Eventually, the Genocide Convention was drafted to explicitly prohibit direct and public incitement to genocide, but not mere hate …

Music And Genocide: Harmonizing Coherence, Freedom And Nonviolence In Incitement Law, Gregory S. Gordon

Gregory S. Gordon

Can singing a song constitute incitement to genocide? A recent decision by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the case of Hutu extremist pop singer Simon Bikindi said it can. But in convicting Bikindi, it failed to apply, much less develop, the incitement law framework it had established, albeit in a piecemeal fashion, through a string of prior opinions (most notably in the famous "Media Case"). That framework asks judges to consider the purpose, text, context, and relationship between the speaker and subject to determine if a speech constitutes criminal incitement. Critics have pointed to the test's piecemeal …

Complementarity And Alternative Justice, Gregory S. Gordon

Gregory S. Gordon

Certain commentators believe that domestic resort to alternative justice mechanisms (ARMs), such as Uganda's "mato oput" (a local tribal rite) or truth commissions, can relieve the International Criminal Court of its obligation to prosecute under the complementarity principle. However, this literature provides only general suggestions for how the ICC could determine whether alternative mechanisms render a case inadmissible under the complementarity regime. This article proposes a concrete set of analytic criteria the ICC can use to formulate an admissibility test for conducting complementarity analysis in difficult cases of municipal reliance on ARMs. The admissibility test entails consideration and parsing of …

‘Special Tribunal For Kenya’: Ignore Waki’S Recommendations To The Country’S Peril, Morris K. Mbondenyi

Morris K Mbondenyi

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And Genocide: The Work Of Lauterpacht And Lemkin In Modern International Law, Part I, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

2008 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Genocide Convention and Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly. These two instruments adopted and proclaimed by then newly formed world body on successive days, 9 and 10 December 1948 respectively, represent two sides of one coin. Born of the horrors of the 1930s and 40s, the United Nations Charter speaks of human rights and to the importance of the rule of law. The Genocide Convention and UDHR are integral to the pursuit of these aims.

The work of two international lawyers, Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin, …

Cultural Heritage In Human Rights And Humanitarian Law, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

The public outcry in response to the looting of the Baghdad Museum following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the bombardment of the historic city of Dubrovnik in 1991 are contemporary examples of international condemnation of attacks upon cultural heritage during armed conflict and belligerent occupation. This international concern has manifested itself since the earliest codification of the laws of war which provided cultural heritage with a protection regime distinct from other civilian property, and state categorically that violations shall be subject to legal sanctions. These general international humanitarian law instruments are augmented by a specialist multilateral framework which governs …

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 …

An African Marshall Plan: Changing U.S. Policy To Promote The Rule Of Law And Prevent Mass Atrocity In The Democratic Republic Of Congo, Gregory S. Gordon

Gregory S. Gordon

Since 1998, 5.4 million citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been killed in what many refer to as "Africa's First World War" -- the deadliest armed conflict since World War II. Despite a 2003 peace deal and the country's first elections in 2006, a staggering 45,000 people continue to die each month and as many as 4,000 women per year are being raped. As Western Europe needed a massive infusion of American assistance to lift itself from misery after World War II, this article contends that the DRC needs such an infusion now. It posits that ending …

Genocide And Jurisdiction: Methods For Achieving Justice Domestically For The International Crimes In Darfur, Matthew N. Thomas

Matthew N. Thomas

The international community as a whole has been reluctant to take action against Sudan for the international crimes being committed in Darfur. However, individual nations, including the United States, have expressed a strong interest in taking proactive measures to achieve justice for those atrocities. Victims of the Sudanese conflict may achieve justice through the domestic courts of the United States. Civilly, the Alien Tort Statute provides a cause of action to foreign citizens for torts committed against them in violation of international law, while the exceptions to the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act permit personal jurisdiction over individuals acting on behalf …

From Incitement To Indictment? Prosecuting Iran's President For Advocating Israel's Destruction And Piecing Together Incitement Law's Emerging Analytical Framework, Gregory S. Gordon

Gregory S. Gordon

On October 25, 2005, at an anti-Zionism conference in Tehran, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called for Israel to "be wiped off the face of the map" -- the first in a series of incendiary speeches arguably advocating liquidation of the Jewish state. Certain commentators argue that these speeches constitute direct and public incitement to commit genocide. This Article analyzes these arguments by examining the nature and scope of recent groundbreaking developments in incitement law arising from the Rwandan genocide prosecutions. For the first time in the legal literature, the Article pieces together an analytical framework based on principles derived from …