International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

Justice Outside Of Criminal Courtrooms And Jailhouses, In Arcs Of Global Justice: Essays In Honour Of William A. Schabas (Margaret M. Deguzman & Diane Marie Amann Eds., 2018), Mark A. Drumbl

Books and Chapters

This chapter examines alternate forms of transitional justice, notably, customary forms of dispute resolution, restitution, reparations, amnesties, and civil sanctions. It suggests that the international community’s preference for criminal trials as accountability mechanisms in the aftermath of genocide results in the ‘othering’ of these alternate forms of justice. Such ‘othering’ narrows legal pluralism to questions of the location of criminal process and the imposition of custodial punishment (who prosecutes, who sentences?), rather than a richer examination of how deployment of a conceptual diversity of overlapping mechanisms could promote shared objectives of accountability, justice, and transition.

A Hierarchy Of The Goals Of International Criminal Courts, 27 Minn. J. Int'l L. 179 (2018), Stuart K. Ford

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This Article represents the first attempt to systematically assess and compare the goals of international criminal courts to one another. To compare them, it focuses on their expected value. This is the value of the benefit that would occur if the goal were to be achieved, multiplied by the likelihood that it will be achieved. This approach allows for goals of differing value and likelihood of achievement to be compared to one another. The goal with the highest expected value is the goal that is most important and that international criminal courts should prioritize.

This Article demonstrates that it is …

Corporate Liability For Human Rights Violations: The Future Of The Alien Tort Claims Act, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This paper addresses complex legal issues in light of and in the context of Jesner v. Arab Bank, a case involving the scope of corporate liability for human rights abuses under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). Part I provides a brief overview of the Jesner case. Part II outlines the case Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. and its holding. Part III discusses Kiobel's shortcomings, including the vagueness of its "touch and concern" test and its failure to specify which law—international or domestic—applies to the issue of corporate liability under the ATCA. Part IV then proposes other …

Sequencing Peace And Justice In Syria, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Since 2011, the conflict in Syria has caused the death of hundreds of thousands of individuals and the displacement of millions. Efforts to refer the Syrian situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) have consistently failed despite well-documented reports about the commission of serious crimes in Syria, including the use of chemical weapons against civilians, torture, the use of child soldiers, and crimes of sexual violence.

This Article explores whether the dual goals of peace and justice can be reconciled in the Syrian context and how these goals may be properly sequenced in order to potentially achieve long-lasting peace in …

Talking Foreign Policy: Jesner V. Arab Bank, Milena Sterio, Thomas Buergenthal, Carsten Stahn, Avidan Cover, Timothy Webster, Michael P. Scharf

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Talking Foreign Policy is a one-hour radio program, hosted by Case Western Reserve University School of Law Co-Dean Michael Scharf, in which experts discuss the salient foreign policy issues of the day. Dean Scharf created Talking Foreign Policy to break down complex foreign policy topics that are prominent in the day-to-day news cycles yet difficult to understand.

This broadcast featured:

• Judge Thomas Buergenthal, the youngest survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, who went on to become the Dean of American University Law School, to serve for twelve years as a judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and then …

The Effect Of International Ngos On Influencing Domestic Policy And Law, Ashley Macarchuk

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis attempts to understand the impact of international human rights and environmental NGOs on affecting domestic policy and law. In particular, it looks at how State-NGO relations, civil society, and accountability affect the success of international NGOs in enacting change in domestic policy. The focus is on four countries with some of the largest human rights and environmental abuses: Argentina, China, India, and Russia. Through these countries, this thesis shows that NGOs have the most influence when State-NGO relations are strong, civil society is active, and NGOs are accountable to both the State and citizens. A key component to …

Lessons For The Treaty Process From The International Law Commission And International Environmental Law, Sara L. Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The chapter examines Amnesty case studies in order to document the state practice identified and the gaps that need to be filled. The chapter will then consider the work of the ILC in its progressive codification of the law on prevention and loss allocation with respect to transboundary harm arising from hazardous activities, culminating in draft Articles8 and draft Principles,9 respectively, in 2001 and 2006. The modest claim of this chapter is that as the key United Nations body responsible for the progressive development and codification of international law, the work of the ILC should surely be of relevance to …

The End Of Special Treatment For Cubans In The U.S. Immigration System: Consequences And Solutions For Cubans With Final Orders Of Removal, Lindsay Daniels

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In January 2016, former President Obama announced the end of the “Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot” Policy, which granted special immigration benefits to Cuban migrants. As part of the agreement to end this policy, the Cuban government agreed to take back its citizens with final orders of removal for criminal convictions, an action that it had refused to take for decades. This Comment will begin by exploring past and present immigration policies between the United States and Cuba, including recent developments like the normalization of relations and the impact of President Trump’s immigration policies.

This Comment will then explore possible avenues of relief …

Targeted Capture, Alexander K.A. Greenawalt

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article confronts one of the most difficult and contested questions in the debate about targeted killing that has raged in academic and policy circles over the last decade. Suppose that, in wartime, the target of a military strike may readily be neutralized through nonlethal means such as capture. Do the attacking forces have an obligation to pursue that nonlethal alternative? The Article defends the duty to employ less restrictive means (“LRM”) in wartime, and it advances several novel arguments in defense of that obligation. In contrast to those who look to external restraints--such as those imposed by international human …

Correcting An Evident Error: A Plea To Revise Jesner V. Arab Bank, Plc, William J. Aceves

Faculty Scholarship

In Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, the Supreme Court held that foreign corporations are not subject to lawsuits under the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”). Written by Justice Kennedy, the highly fractured opinion offered several reasons for its holding. Although commentators have already criticized various aspects of Justice Kennedy’s opinion, one point has not received meaningful consideration and merits correction. In his plurality opinion, Justice Kennedy attached significance to the placement of the Torture Victim Protection Act (“TVPA”) as a statutory note to the ATS in the U.S. Code. In so doing, he disregarded longstanding practice and black letter law that …

Jesner V. Arab Bank, Rebecca Hamilton

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The exclusion of transnational human rights litigation from U.S. federal courts is, for most practical purposes, now complete. On April 24, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a 5–4 ruling in Jesner v. Arab Bank, deciding that foreign corporations cannot be sued under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).

Inaccessible Apexes: Comparing Access To Regional Human Rights Courts And Commissions In Europe, The Americas, And Africa Symposium: Comparing Regional Human Rights Regimes, Claudia Martin, Francoise Hampson, Frans Vilijoen

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The three well-established regional human rights systems (in Europe, the Americas, and Africa) aim to provide access to individuals to a decision and remedy based on the violation of human rights in the founding treaties. In this article, the notion of the "dispute pyramid," developed in sociolegal studies, generally, is adjusted to describe and help us better understand regional access. Access differs considerably across the three systems, and its major stumbling blocks present themselves at different stages. In the European system, most cases are dismissed at the admissibility phase. In the Inter-American system, most cases are weeded out at the …

Pluralism In International Criminal Procedure, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Over the last two decades, international criminal procedure has become a recognized body of law, with textbooks, treatises, and law review articles discussing its rules and principles and theorizing its goals and methods. The term refers to the procedures used at the international criminal courts and tribunals created to address some of the most serious offenses, such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Some of these courts are fully international, like the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). Others are “hybrid courts,” …

Rethinking The Individual In International Law, Chiara Giorgetti

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The acceptance of the individual as a subject of international law has been gradual and asymmetrical. Individuals have become international law subjects in their own rights in some international legal areas, including human rights and international criminal law. This affords individuals substantive rights and obligations, as well as procedural rights. In most legal areas, however, individuals acquired substantive rights, but not direct procedural rights. In those instances, individuals need the filter of a nationality to enforce their claim and remedy in international proceedings. This Article criticizes the nationality-based approach and argues that there are better and alternative ways to provide …

La Agresión Como Punto De Contacto Entre El Derecho Internacional De Los Derechos Humanos Y El Derecho Internacional Humanitario, Luciano Pezzano

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Theory And Practice At The Intersection Between Human Rights And Humanitarian Law, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

The United States is more than fifteen years into a fight against terrorism that shows no sign of abating and, with the change in administration, appears to be intensifying. Other Western democracies that have historically been uneasy about U.S. counterterrorism policies have, in recent years, shifted toward those policies. And armed nonstate groups continue to commit large-scale acts of violence in multiple distinct theaters. The legal issues that these situations present are not entirely new, but neither are they going away. Recent publications, like the three works under review, thus provide useful opportunities to reflect on and refine our thinking …

The Peace Vs. Justice Debate And The Syrian Crisis, Paul Williams, Lisa Dicker, C. Danae Paterson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Peace negotiators often face the difficult decision of whether to pursue peace at the potential cost of achieving justice, or to pursue justice at the potential cost of achieving near term peace. There are abiding ethical and moral debates surrounding this tension between peace and justice. In Syria—where the death toll has exceeded 470,000, 11 million have been displaced, and there are over 14,000 documented cases of torture to the point of death—the peace versus justice debate is a living dilemma with which negotiators are currently grappling. This article strives to examine a timely facet of this multidimensional puzzle: how …

Rehabilitation In Article 14 Of The Convention Against Torture And Other Cruel, Inhuman, Or Degrading Treatment Or Punishment, Claudio Grossman, Nora Sevaass, Felice Gaer

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Persons exposed to torture have suffered serious attacks on their lives, relationships, health, and sense of dignity. The torture they experienced will remain a part of them even if they manage to move ahead and work through the pain. The destructive power of torture affects life on so many levels: mind and body, values and relationships, and the capacity for work and leisure. Providing opportunities to reconstruct lives after torture should be a priority in the international effort to prevent and prohibit torture. International recognition of the right to redress, including rehabilitation for all victims of torture and other cruel, …

Politics, Power Dynamics, And The Limits Of Existing Self-Regulation And Oversight In Icc Preliminary Examinations, Asaf Lubin

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

Professor Lubin's contribution to volume 2 is titled, "Politics, Power Dynamics, and the Limits of Existing Self-Regulation and Oversight in ICC Preliminary Examinations," pp. 77-150.

Should the normative framework that governs the International Criminal Court’s (‘ICC’) oversight concerning preliminary examinations undergo a reform? The following chapter answers this question in the affirmative, making the claim that both self-regulation by the Office of the Prosecutor (‘OTP’) and quality control by the Pre-Trial Chamber (‘PTC’) currently suffer from significant deficiencies, thus failing to reach the optimum point on the scale between absolute prosecutorial discretion and absolute control. The chapter demonstrates some of …

When Terrorists Govern: Protecting Civilians In Conflicts With State-Building Armed Groups, Mara R. Revkin

Faculty Scholarship

Many existing U.S. counter-terrorism policies, including those governing targeting and detention, rely on an empirical assumption that terrorist groups are primarily military organizations. This assumption may be appropriate in the case of al-Qaeda, but it fails to describe terrorist groups that engage not only in warfare but also in governance and state-building such as the Islamic State, a self-declared “caliphate” that—at the height of its expansion in 2014—claimed sovereignty over an estimated 34,000 square miles and 10 million civilians. This Article identifies a category of “state-building” terrorist groups that can be distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) the presence of …

The Popular But Unlawful Armed Reprisal, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

The United States and Iran carried out armed reprisals in Syria during 2017 in the wake of chemical and terror attacks. Despite support for their actions even by countries such as Germany and France, retaliatory uses of force are clearly prohibited under international law. International law generally prohibits all use of armed force with narrow exceptions for self-defense, United Nations Security Council authorization, and consent of a government to participate in a civil war. Military force after an incident are reprisals, which have been expressly forbidden by the UN. Prior to the Trump administration, the U.S. consistently attempted to justify …

The Human Costs Of Exiting And Revising Trade And Investment Agreements: Local Community Interests, Human Rights, And Global Politics, Diane Desierto

Journal Articles

International law is both a process of assertion and reliance and a system of principles and rules: together they constitute the course of international law, confounding those critics who simplemindedly assert that it can be one (process) or the other (system) but not both. . . . we treat the international legal system as an axiom—a social fact. We differ on many other ideas: new subjects, the limits of multilateralism, fragmentation, pluralism and universality, as a result of which we continue to debate the true characteristics of the international system. States intent upon effecting changes in the law will naturally …

The Violent Persecution Of The Iranian Bahá’Í: A Call To Take A Human Capabilities Approach To Defining Genocide, Camilia R. Brown

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Iran is home to an estimated 300,000 members of the Bahá’í faith, a global religion that originated in Iran in the early nineteenth century. Since the faith’s inception, thousands of Bahá’ís have been killed, imprisoned, and tortured. Today, they are unable to attend colleges and universities, hold business licenses, bury their dead, or gather for worship. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the current regime has worked to systemically impede the progress of the Bahá’í community. While hundreds of Bahá’ís have died at the hands of the current regime, the high threshold for bringing a case under the intent prong …

Indeterminacy In The Law Of War: The Need For An International Advisory Regime, Ariel Zemach

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Indeterminacy in the law of war exacts a severe humanitarian toll, and it is not likely to be reduced by the conclusion of additional treaties. The present article argues that the adverse consequences of this indeterminacy may be mitigated through a U.N. Security Council (SC) action establishing an international advisory regime and using the broad powers of the SC to provide incentives for states to subscribe to this regime voluntarily. States subscribing to the advisory regime (“operating states”) would undertake to follow the interpretation of the law of war laid out by international legal advisors. The advisory regime would represent …

At The Intersection Of Land Grievances And Legal Liability: The Need To Reconsider Contract Rights And Expectations At The Supranational Level, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lise Johnson, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

This Article explores how host governments’ legal obligations can affect or constrain their ability to address “land grievances,” which are defined as concerns raised by local individuals or communities in response to negative impacts of land-based investments. Obligations under international investment law, international human rights law, and investor-state contracts can be in tension or can directly conflict with one another, creating complexity for governments seeking to respond to land grievances. To explore the legal considerations that governments must navigate in this context, this Article considers several options that governments could pursue to respond to land grievances. In all of the …

The Corporate Face Of The Alien Tort Claims Act: How An Old Statute Mandates A New Understanding Of Global Interdependence, Lorelle Londis

Maine Law Review

In the past thirty-five years, international human rights lawyers and, more recently, international environmental lawyers, have been invoking the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) as a tool to prosecute human rights abuses committed abroad by transnational corporations (TNs) in U.S. federal courts. The ATCA provides: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” Although plaintiffs' lawyers have experienced some success in the human rights context, most claims of environmental abuses have failed. In all these …

Remembering An Abolitionist, Ambassador John R. Miller (May 23, 1938-October 4, 2017), Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

A memorial for Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, John R. Miller (May 23, 1938-October 4, 2017). Ambassador Miller believed modern-day slavery, encompassing sex trafficking and forced labor, requires a principled global offensive that the United States is morally obligated to lead. In the four formative years he led the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, 2002 to 2006, John Miller set the office’s course as diplomatically aggressive and programmatically creative. He made the annual Trafficking in Persons report more than a bureaucratic submission, putting daring heroes at the center, and insisting on compelling …

Comment On Us Trade And Investment Agreements Submitted To Ustr, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Comments to USTR Re: Review of US Trade and Investment Agreements (July 17, 2017): CCSI, in response to the United States Trade Representative’s request for public comment to inform its performance review of US trade and investment agreements, submitted Comments that focused on the impact that investment protection provisions, enforceable through investor-state dispute settlement, have on rights-compliant, inclusive sustainable development within the United States and abroad.

The Future Of U.S. Detention Under International Law: Workshop Report, International Committee Of The Red Cross (Icrc), Harvard Law School Program On International Law And Armed Conflict (Hls Pilac), Stockton Center For The Study Of International Law (U.S. Naval War College)

International Law Studies

The International Committee of the Red Cross Regional Delegation for the United States and Canada, the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, and the Stockton Center for the Study of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College recently hosted a workshop titled Global Battlefields: The Future of U.S. Detention under International Law. The workshop was designed to facilitate discussion on international law issues pertaining to U.S. detention practices and policies in armed conflict. Workshop participants included members of government, legal experts, practitioners and scholars from a variety of countries. This report attempts to capture the …

Fragmented Wars: Multi-Territorial Military Operations Against Armed Groups, Noam Lubell

International Law Studies

Recent years have seen the emergence of significant legal debate surrounding the use of force against armed groups located in other States. With time, it has become clear that in many cases such operations are not confined to the territory of one other State, but expand to encompass multiple territories and often more than one armed group. This article examines multi-territorial conflicts with armed groups through the lens of several legal frameworks. Among other topics, it analyses the questions surrounding the extension of self-defense into multiple territories, the classification of the hostilities with the group and between involved States, the …