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23 Mar

The International Court of Justice issued two press releases about upcoming hearings in both the Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Niger), scheduled for October 8-17, 2012; and the Maritime Dispute (Peru v. Chile), scheduled for December 3-14, 2012. Reuters reports a three-way scramble for the upcoming World Bank presidential elections, with American economist Jeffrey Sachs registered as a candidate. African finance ministers have...

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22 Mar

I found much to like and dislike in this essay by Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole discussing his widely shared tweets on the Invisible Children Kony 2012 video. Here is one: Teju Cole@tejucole 1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex. Cole goes on to observe (rightly in my...

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22 Mar

A few months ago, I mentioned here on Opinio Juris a new feature of the ASIL Annual Meeting that we’re introducing this year:  ASIL IDEAS:  Idea, Direction, Engagement, Action, Solutions. These shorter talks, about 20 minutes long, will feature innovative ideas international lawyers will want to think about from people you might not otherwise hear.  Speakers will be drawn from a broad...

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22 Mar

Jhesus-Maria, King of England, and you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself regent of the Kingdom of France, you, Guillaume de la Poule, count of Suffort, Jean, sire of Talbot, and you, Thomas, sire of Scales, who call yourselves lieutenants of the Duke of Bedford, acknowledge the summons of the King of Heaven.  Render to the Maid here sent by...

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22 Mar

[James G. Stewart is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia] I start my reaction to Thomas Weigend’s comments by insisting on my great gratitude to him. In his earlier comments on a draft of this article, he offered criticisms that were far more extensive that those he gently revealed in this blog (or that I have ever received for an article before). Although my final piece does not adequately respond to all his misgivings, I confess that I may have learned at least as much from his extensive criticisms as I did from the voluminous literature required to write this. In acknowledging his great intellectual generosity, let me nonetheless offer some response to portions of his criticism. Professor Weigend starts by suggesting that the “way out” offered by a unitary theory of perpetration is intuitively compelling because of its simplicity. What law student, attorney or judge would disagree, he asks, would deny that these differentiated modes of liability are really not easy? Here, I fear that he perhaps inadvertently reduces my argument to a mere distaste for complexity. But my goal is not simplicity for simplicity’s sake—I am also minded to ensure that international modes of liability consistently respect culpability, to halt the fractured development of modes of liability internationally from one fad to another and to suggest a means of unifying standards of blame attribution across the many jurisdictions that can prosecute these crimes.
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22 Mar

[Thomas Weigend is Professor of International and Criminal Law at the University of Cologne] In his elegantly written and profound article, James Stewart argues in favor of abandoning, in international criminal law, the traditional distinction between perpetratorship and complicity. He favors a unitary solution: every person who substantially contributes to the commission of an international offense should simply be convicted of that crime, with individual differences as to the degree of responsibility to be taken into consideration only at the sentencing stage. Stewart’s proposal will immediately appeal to any lawyer who has ever ploughed through the intricacies of the distinction among several modes of liability, be it under domestic or international criminal law. The lives of judges, advocates and law students alike would be easier if they did not have to worry about the fine lines between aiding and committing, or between instigating another person to commit a crime and using that person as an (“innocent”?) agent. With regard to the law of complicity, it is not difficult to find examples of contradictions and inconsistencies in the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals, and Stewart points them out with wit and precision. I fully concur with this part of the author’s analysis. For example, the fact that some legal systems require a “substantive contribution” for aiding and abetting clearly is a red herring invented for the purpose of allowing judges some leeway in assessing the criminal liability of persons who are marginally involved in the “core” crime. Depending on the way one interprets this concept, “substantive contribution” can mean a little less or a little more than providing a sine qua non contribution to the actus reus. Likewise, the contested issue of whether an accomplice can act with a lesser degree of mens rea than the perpetrator leads to intractable quandaries: Isn’t it unfair to hold A liable for complicity in a special intent crime when he lacks that special intent? But why, on the other hand, should B who knowingly helps a perpetrator of genocide go unpunished just because B does not act with genocidal intent? Much of this has to do with the mess that international criminal law has made of mens rea, but it remains true that the distinctions of various levels of liability (and the cracks between them) lead to particularly unconvincing results in the area of complicity.
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22 Mar

In a military coup, soldiers have claimed to have overthrown the president of Mali, Amadou Toumani Toure. Libya resists ICC’s custody claims in cases against Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi and Abdullah Senussi. Al-Qaeda has taken responsibility for dozens of bombings across Iraq, which have killed at least 52, leading up to the Arab League summit in Baghdad. China’s Justice Ministry has ordered all lawyers...

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21 Mar

[James G. Stewart is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia] I mean no false praise to Darryl Robinson when I describe his article The Identity Crisis in International Criminal Justice as one of the very best in the discipline. Many years ago, when working as a practitioner of international criminal law, I read Mirjan Damaška’s article The Shadow Side of Superior Responsibility. I had to take the afternoon off work to recover. While I was probably too old and ugly to have a similar experience with Identity Crisis, it registered at a similar level. Both are iconic in the discipline, both deeply shaped the way I think about these issues, and both troubled me. I will be more than glad if this piece has half that effect for others. Darryl and I agree on a great many things. We agree that international modes of liability have veered from the path of culpability, that many ‘modes of liability’ zealously adopted in international criminal justice are illiberal in their peripheries, and that the growth of these modes seems capricious next to defensible theoretical standards. We seem to part ways in the mostly inconsequential realm of speculating how all this came about. In his kind response, Darryl claims I have overstated the position in his and other authors’ criticisms of international modes of liability, who only argue that the international influence is an influence not the only influence. But this cuts two ways. I too only argue that when it comes to “modes of liability”, departures from principle “stem less from international influence and more from the natural infiltration of indefensible domestic doctrine into the international arena.” (p. 218-219) To some extent then we have no real differences on this score, but I do think it necessary to reiterate my suspicion that someone brave enough to wade through the literature of international “modes of liability” will unearth a number of references to the criminal law’s restraining character, acknowledgments that domestic criminal law violates culpability too but tendencies to downplay that reality as compared with international practices, and most importantly, a lingering perception that there is something atypical in international criminal justice’s departures from defensible theoretical standards. Whether intentional or not, this excellent literature has given rise to the perception that international criminal justice is exceptional in its illiberalism.
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21 Mar

[Darryl Robinson is Assistant Professor at Queen's University Faculty of Law] James Stewart’s article “The End of ‘Modes of Liability’ for International Crimes” is an impressive piece of scholarship.  It is one of the most sophisticated works to date in bringing the rich scholarship on criminal law theory to bear on problems of international criminal law (ICL).  Stewart brings admirable—and frankly enviable—skill in succinctly explaining major controversies in criminal law theory and weaving that literature into an analysis of ICL issues.  While I will raise some critical questions here, I applaud and share his objective of theorizing about ICL from a liberal perspective. Of course, the value of any comment lies in the disagreements.  Surprisingly, I agree with the aspects with which I might be presumed to disagree, and I disagree with some aspects with which I might be presumed to agree.  Namely, I agree with his proposition that many problems of ICL flow from domestic law and not from international influences, even though that proposition is presented as oppositional to the views of myself and others.  Conversely, I ask whether Stewart’s critiques of complicity might be unnecessarily stringent. Domestic v. International Influences Stewart quite rightly points out that domestic legal systems often contain doctrines that arguably contradict fundamental liberal principles, and that some of ICL’s problematic doctrines were drawn from domestic legal systems.  This is a valuable complement to the point made by scholars such as Danner, Martinez, Fletcher, Ohlin, Damaška and me that some problematic doctrines are fostered by reasoning particular to ICL. However, when contrasting his position with that of other scholars, Stewart seems to somewhat overstate their position.  For example, he refers to and refutes the “thesis that broad modes of liability are necessarily hatched internationally” (p. 179), and the “assurance that unprincipled international rules necessarily reveal the triumph of international agenda over the restraining force of the criminal law” (p. 203) (emphasis added).  As far as I know, none of the cited scholars have ever suggested any such necessary linkage.  They have not suggested that all, or even most, of the problematic doctrines of ICL flow from international influences.  Similarly, Stewart demonstrates that some departures are not “nefarious creations of an illiberal international system” (p. 198) or a “nefarious utilitarian agenda derived from [ICL’s] international political status” (p. 182).  I certainly agree, but the refutation is misplaced in that nefariousness has not been suggested.  I also don’t think scholars have suggested that domestic systems are free of problematic doctrines (p. 169).
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21 Mar

Kudos to Daniel Chow and Mike Koehler for a wonderful conference last week at Ohio State Law School addressing the FCPA at thirty-five. It’s always a risk to hold a conference that mingles hard-core practitioners with soft and fuzzy academics, but this one seemed to work. The defense and prosecution side of the FCPA bar battled it out...

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21 Mar

[James G. Stewart is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia] My article argues for an end to modes of liability in international criminal justice. It uses complicity, also known as aiding and abetting or accomplice liability, to show that all modes of liability violate standards international criminal lawyers have deployed as benchmarks in the deconstruction of other modes of liability like superior responsibility and joint criminal enterprise. Thus, I advocate for a unitary theory of blame attribution, whereby responsibility turns only on having made a causal contribution to the relevant harm and having made the requisite blameworthy moral choice designated within the offense. I argue that this unitary theory could attach to all prosecutions for international crimes, both international and domestic, which would transcend the long-endured fixation on modes of liability within the discipline. I could say considerably more about the content of the article itself, but a longer abstract and an earlier draft of the entire paper are available on SSRN. I therefore think it more interesting and less repetitive to describe the influences that brought me to this position and the lessons I have learned though this process: Influence One - Major Decisions about “Modes of Liability” without a Theoretical Framework Several years ago, I worked as an Appeals Counsel for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In that capacity, I was assigned to an issue of particular conceptual difficulty: within the context of superior responsibility, was a superior’s failure to punish subordinates for international crimes he knew they had perpetrated a means of participating in his subordinates’ international crimes, or a separate lesser inchoate crime comparable to dereliction of duty? On the one hand, international courts had clearly treated failures to punish as a means of participating in the underlying crime for a very long time, perfectly oblivious to the conceptual problem. On the hand, the competing idea raised initially by Mirjan Damaška, was that international criminal justice was draconian in convicting an accused of a crime he in no way caused. The two positions seemed equally compelling—one favored formalistically ascertaining and applying the content of existing international law, the other gave preference to basic concepts of fairness derived from criminal principles. In the unreasonably short period of time we had to take a position on the issue of this theoretical complexity, it struck me that many advocates sought to justify or refute the approach by making analogies to equivalent domestic concepts, and there was a real absence of any significant conceptual framework through which to decide. This article was an attempt to plot that framework.
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21 Mar

Mauritania has agreed to extradite ex-Libyan chief-of-intelligence Abdullah al-Senussi to Libya. The Economist outlines the world’s biggest arms exporters based on a new report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. US President Barack Obama is slated to visit the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea today ahead of his upcoming visit with South Korean president, Lee Meyung-Bak. Western powers diluted the...

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