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Case For Overseas Article Iii Courts: The Blackwater Effect And Criminal Accountability In The Age Of Privatization, The, Alan F. Williams
Case For Overseas Article Iii Courts: The Blackwater Effect And Criminal Accountability In The Age Of Privatization, The, Alan F. Williams
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
A series of high-profile cases involving the alleged murders of Iraqi civilians by U.S. contractors operating overseas has highlighted the longstanding problem of how best to address crimes committed overseas by civilian employees, dependents, or contractors of the U.S. government. Among the most notorious of these incidents is the alleged killing of seventeen Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad on September 16, 2007 by employees of Blackwater Worldwide, a private corporation specializing in military operations that has subsequently renamed itself "Xe."2News reports of this incident prompted embarrassment and outrage as many Americans learned that U.S. civilian contractors like the …
Reviving Lenity And Honest Belief At The Boundaries Of Criminal Law, John L. Diamond
Reviving Lenity And Honest Belief At The Boundaries Of Criminal Law, John L. Diamond
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
It is a common misconception that there is a line between criminal and innocent conduct that is transparent and fixed. In fact, much of criminal law is fluid and elastic, free, if strategically applied, to label conduct as legal or illegal. In some cases, this reflects crimes that are vaguely defined or imprecise. In other cases, the prohibited conduct simply includes what is so conventionally accepted as legal that the criminal label is perceived as inapplicable until a prosecutor chooses to apply it. The problem of a fluid rather than a fixed line for criminality is that prosecutorial discretion becomes …