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The Forgotten Nuremberg Hate Speech Case: Otto Dietrich And The Future Of Persecution Law, Gregory S. Gordon
The Forgotten Nuremberg Hate Speech Case: Otto Dietrich And The Future Of Persecution Law, Gregory S. Gordon
Gregory S. Gordon
Among international jurists, the conventional wisdom is that atrocity speech law sprang fully formed from two judgments issued by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT): the crimes against humanity conviction of Nazi newspaper editor Julius Streicher, and the acquittal on the same charge of Third Reich Radio Division Chief Hans Fritzsche. But the exclusive focus on the IMT judgments as the founding texts of atrocity speech law is misplaced. Not long after Streicher and Fritzsche, and in the same courtroom, the United States Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT) in the Ministries Case, issued an equally significant crimes against …
Speech Along The Atrocity Spectrum, Gregory S. Gordon
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 …
Hate Speech And Persecution: A Contextual Approach, Gregory S. Gordon
Hate Speech And Persecution: A Contextual Approach, Gregory S. Gordon
Gregory S. Gordon
Scholarly work on atrocity-speech law has focused almost exclusively on incitement to genocide. But case law has established liability for a different speech offense: persecution as a crime against humanity (CAH). The lack of scholarship regarding this crime is puzzling given a split between the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) and Yugoslavia (ICTY) on the issue of whether hate speech can serve as an actus reus for CAH-persecution. In the 2000 Ruggiu and 2003 Nahimana judgments, separate ICTR Trial Chambers found that hate speech radio broadcasts not calling for violence deprived the target ethnic group of fundamental rights and …
Music And Genocide: Harmonizing Coherence, Freedom And Nonviolence In Incitement Law, Gregory S. Gordon
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
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 …
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
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 …