Criminal Law Commons^™

Torture: Considering A Framework For Limiting Use, Scott J. Goldberg

ExpressO

Abu Graib, Guantanamo, the War on Terror—the debate over the use of torture is still very much alive in the world today. The debate can be divided into two questions: (1) whether there should be an actual absolute ban where torture is never allowed either ethically or legally, and (2) if torture should be allowed under certain circumstances what form of regulation is best able to ensure that it is used only in those most limited circumstances. Currently, there is an absolute ban in place, yet world leaders, applying a case-by-case utilitarian approach, in fact permit the use of torture …

Cambodia At A Crossroads: How Repealing Untac Article 63, Cambodia's Current Defamation Law, Will Lead To A More Vigorous Democracy, Alicia A. Adornato

ExpressO

Cambodia’s current criminal defamation law is an impermissible intrusion of Cambodians’ constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression. The law itself is a remnant of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia. Moreover it is now being used as a tool to silence the government’s political opposition through a weak judiciary system, leaving in its wake a democracy afraid to exercise its constitutionally guaranteed rights. This law is an unconstitutional violation for several reasons: first, it violates the right to freedom of expression which is guaranteed in Cambodia’s Constitution. Secondly, it is incompatible with Cambodia’s human rights obligations under the …

Bringing Human Rights Abusers To Justice In U.S. Courts: Carrying Forward The Legacy Of The Nuremberg Trials, Sandra Coliver

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Updates From The International Criminal Courts, Mariam Ahmedani, Meghan Stewart, Brianne Mcgonigle, Lizzie Rushing, Anne Heindel, Leslie Thompson

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Updates From The International Criminal Courts, Mariam Ahmedani, Anne Heindel, Jeffrey Forbes, Robin Murphy, Leslie Thompson

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Peace Versus Justice, Richard J. Goldstone

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Legislating Racial Fairness In Criminal Justice, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Twenty years ago, in McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court rejected a capital defendant's claim that statistical evidence of racial discrimination in the administration of Georgia's death penalty system constituted a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Yet, even as McCleskey effectively bars constitutional challenges to racial disparities in the criminal justice system where invidious bias is difficult to establish, the Court invites advocates to pursue legislation as a remedy to racial disparities. Indeed, the McCleskey Court offers as a rationale for its ruling the judiciary's institutional incompetence to remedy these disparities, holding that "McCleskey's arguments are best …

Bringing Families In: Recommendations Of The Incarceration, Reentry And Family Roundtables, Ann Cammett, Johnna Christian, Nancy Fisherman, Lori Scott-Pickens

Scholarly Works

Building on the findings of the New Jersey Reentry Roundtable and a growing concern around the state about how to improve outcomes for the more than 70,000 individuals expected to return home from prison over the next five years, the roundtable examined the complex role that families – broadly defined – play in the lives of prisoners during incarceration and after their release. This document presents a set of recommendations emerging directly from roundtable sessions and provides a road map for individual and collaborative efforts accepted by a range of key players in New Jersey, including government officials, community and …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Reinvigorating First Year Criminal Law: Integrating Mental Disability Issues Into The Criminal Law Course, Linda C. Fentiman

ExpressO

This article explores how mental disability issues can be incorporated into a traditional criminal law class, in order to enrich student understanding of both mental disability law and criminal law doctrine. The intersection of mental disability with the doctrinal aspects of criminal law can be broken into five major categories: 1) the justifications for punishment; 2) the definition of crime in general, e.g., the requirements of a voluntary act, mens rea, and causation; 3) the definition of particular crimes, such as murder, manslaughter, rape, and burglary; 4) defenses to crime, including mistake of law and of fact, as well as …

Taking The Stand: The Lessons Of The Three Men Who Took The Japanese American Internment To Court, Lorraine K. Bannai

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Child Laundering: How The Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes And Incentivizes The Practices Of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, And Stealing Children, David M. Smolin

ExpressO

This article documents and analyzes a substantial incidence of "child laundering" within the intercountry adoption system. Child laundering occurs when children are taken illegally from birth families through child buying or kidnapping, and then "laundered" through the adoption system as "orphans" and then "adoptees." The article then proposes reforms to the intercountry adoption system that could substantially reduce the incidence of child laundering.

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 …

Pursuing Justice For The Mentally Disabled, Grant H. Morris

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

This article considers whether lawyers act as zealous advocates when they represent mentally disordered, involuntarily committed patients who wish to assert their right to refuse treatment with psychotropic medication. After discussing a study that clearly demonstrates that lawyers do not do so, the article explores the reasons for this inappropriate behavior. Michael Perlin characterizes the problem as “sanism,” which he describes as an irrational prejudice against mentally disabled persons of the same quality and character as other irrational prejudices that cause and are reflected in prevailing social attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry. The article critiques Perlin’s characterization …

Victims Of Peace: Current Abuse Allegations Against U.N. Peacekeepers And The Role Of Law In Preventing Them In The Future, Alexandra R. Harrington

ExpressO

This article addresses the increasingly prevalent and horrific allegations of sexual abuse made against U.N. peacekeepers. The primary allegations addressed are those from the Congo, as the most plentiful and readily available evidence of these abuses comes from the region. The goal of this paper is not merely to critique the U.N. and its handling of the current peacekeeper abuse allegations, as such a critique would only serve half of the problem. Rather, this paper will use the past and current understandings of the U.N. Charter, peacekeeping, international law, and military justice to suggest several options for handling both the …

Sita's Trousseau: Restorative Justice, Domestic Violence, And South Asian Culture, Rashmi Goel

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on the particular cultural factors that affect South Asian women who are abused and immigrant South Asian women who are abused, in particular, in the restorative justice process. By exploring cultural practices and the icon of Sita, the mythological heroine of the Ramayana, this article demonstrates how the South Asian ideals of womanhood and wifehood help to create a mind-set whereby South Asian women are reluctant to advocate for themselves and are reluctant to leave. Such a condition is contrary to the conditions and abilities assumed by the restorative justicemovement for dispute resolution, inside or outside of …

The Prohibition Of Widespread Rape As A Jus Cogens, Dean Adams

San Diego International Law Journal

This Comment explains why the prohibition of widespread rape should be recognized as a jus cogens through analyses of the failure of existing international legal instruments, advances within international law towards the universal prohibition of widespread rape, and policy reasons for classifying widespread rape as a jus cogens. In doing so, this comment will demonstrate the particular timeliness of this topic by reviewing the use of widespread rape in several countries through the 1990s, the widespread rape presently occurring in Kenya, and the emerging reports from Iraq of rape committed at the hands of the Saddam Hussein regime. Finally, this …

Securing A Journalist's Testimonial Privilege In The International Criminal Court, Anastasia Heeger

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article argues that given the unique and significant contribution of journalists to uncovering and documenting war crimes, the ICC should amend its evidentiary rules to recognize a qualified journalist's privilege. In doing so, the ICC should clearly identify who may benefit from such a privilege, clarify a procedure for balancing the need of reportorial testimony against prosecution and defense interests, and, lastly provide for mandatory consultations between the court and affected news organizations or journalists before allowing the issuance of a subpoena. Such clarity will benefit not only journalists working in war zones and the ICC, but will provide …

David P. Forsythe On The United States And The Rule Of Law In International Affairs By John F. Murphy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 367pp., David P. Forsythe

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The United States and the Rule of Law in International Affairs by John F. Murphy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 367pp.

The New Deterrence: Crime And Policy In The Age Of Globalization, Patrick Keenan

ExpressO

Globalization has made it much easier for criminal activity to cross borders, but deterrence theory has not kept up with this changed reality. I draw insights from both law-and-economics and criminology literature to enrich our understanding of deterrence. I ground my theoretical discussion in the real-world problem of sex tourism as an example of the kind of unwanted activity that now crosses borders and has complicated our understanding of deterrence. I focus on two issues central to deterrence that have not gotten sufficient scholarly attention: the phenomenon of displacement and the role of status. I argue that informal sanctions, as …

The Role Of Courts In Preventing International Child Abduction, Deborah M. Zawadzki

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The note argues that international child abduction is a growing issue exacerbated by globalization, with existing legal frameworks like the Hague Convention and the International Parental Kidnapping Crime Act (IPKCA) proving insufficient to address the problem. It advocates for a more proactive role for U.S. courts in preventing abductions through legislative support and comprehensive preventative measures, emphasizing the need for state-level reforms, such as Texas’s H.B. 1899, to fill gaps in current laws and protect children at risk

Neo-Colonial Relationships Gone Wrong: French Leaders Should Be Held Legally Responsible For Their Role In The Rwandan Genocide, Kirsten T. Bowman

ExpressO

This article explores the role of outside government intervention in civil war conflicts and the ability of these government actors to be held responsible for crimes committed by association and assistance to war criminals. By using the example of the French/Rwandan relationship and the criminal responsibility that France may have for its association and assistance to the Hutu majority government, it looks to the pitfalls that many western countries could find themselves in by assuming similar roles with other repressive and unstable regimes. This analysis proves particularly timely as lawyers for six Rwandan citizens recently filed a lawsuit with the …

Pluralizing International Criminal Justice, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This Review Essay of Philippe Sands' (ed.) From Nuremberg to the Hague (2003) explores a number of controversial aspects of the theory and praxis of international criminal law. The Review Essay traces the extant heuristic of international criminal justice institutions to Nuremberg and posits that the Nuremberg experience suggests the need for modesty about what criminal justice actually can accomplish in the wake of mass atrocity. It also explores the place of one person's guilt among organic crime, the reality that international criminal law may gloss over criminogenic conditions in its pursuit of individualized accountability, the possibility of group sanction …

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.

Collective Violence And Individual Punishment: The Criminality Of Mass Atrocity, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

There is a recent proliferation of courts and tribunals to prosecute perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The zenith of this institution-building is the permanent International Criminal Court, which came into force in 2002. Each of these new institutions rests on the foundational premise that it is appropriate to treat the perpetrator of mass atrocity in the same manner that domestic criminal law treats the common criminal. The modalities and rationales of international criminal law are directly borrowed from the domestic criminal law of those states that dominate the international order. In this Article, I challenge this …

Law And Atrocity: Settling Accounts In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Ten years ago, genocide ravaged the tiny African nation of Rwanda. In the wake of this violence, Rwanda has struggled to reconstruct, rebuild, and reconcile. Law-in particular, criminal trials for alleged perpetrators of genocide- has figured prominently among various policy mechanisms in postgenocide Rwanda. Criminal trials for Rwandan genocidaires' aspire to achieve several goals. These include exacting retribution, promoting reconciliation, deterring future violence, expressing victims' outrage, maintaining peace, and cultivating a culture of human rights.2 In this Lecture, I examine the extent to which these trials attain these multiple, often competing, and largely overwhelming goals. Part I begins by setting …

Criminalizing Hate Speech: A Comment On The Ictr’S Judgment In The Prosecutor V. Nahimana, Et Al., Diane F. Orentlicher

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Criminalizing Hate Speech In The Crucible Of Trial: Prosecutor V. Nahimana, Diane F. Orentlicher

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Private Military Contractor Liability And Accountability After Abu Ghraib, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1237 (2005), Mark W. Bina

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.