In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

23 Mar

[James G. Stewart is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia] Jens Ohlin, with George Fletcher and in his own right, has been a pioneer in bringing criminal theory to bear on international criminal justice. His earlier work warned us that our dogmatic insistence on ascertaining international criminal law in pre-existing sources of public international law risked undermining the inherently criminal nature of this adjudicative process and the fundamental notions of criminal law that must apply as a consequence. As is the case with the other critics who have written for this blog, my article is counterfactually dependent on his earlier groundbreaking work. I think it appropriate to start by placing Ohlin’s comments in context. His admirable defense of the differentiated model of blame attribution presently in place in international criminal justice does not take into account that arguably the most prominent theorists even within his own jurisdiction, from Michael Moore to Sandy Kadish and Larry Alexander, all view complicity as conceptually superfluous. This does not respond in any way to Ohlin’s comments, but I do think it important to table the growing body of authoritative academic argument against the differentiated model international courts have unquestioningly absorbed. In many respects, my article is an attempt to do just that. On another preliminary note, I fear that Ohlin’s criticisms might miss the real essence of the paper. Most importantly, he does not address the normative substance of “modes of liability” in international criminal justice. Both the title to his response (“Names, Labels, and Roses”), and the content of his remarks under that heading imply that the issue is just one of nomenclature, as if there were no normative significance to convicting someone of genocide for recklessly assisting the crime. But the major argument in my paper is that in its extremities, complicity violates the same standards that commentators have used to criticize the overreach of other “modes of liability” within the discipline, and that consequently, this mode of liability too is sometimes unjustifiably harsh or simply unprincipled.
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23 Mar

[Jens David Ohlin is Associate Professor of Law at Cornell Law School; he blogs at LieberCode] In his excellent essay, James Stewart advocates for a unitary model of perpetration. To the extent that this means the end of modes of liability, so be it says Stewart. We don’t need them. They codify distinctions that we don’t need, promote confusion over coherence, and so we should instead streamline the centrifugal doctrines into a single account of causal contribution. On the elegance scale, Stewart’s proposal should score a 10 from most judges. Stewart pitches his account as revisionary, an attempt to right the ship after years of confusing scholarly and judicial debate about modes of liability and the difference between principals and accessories (or other categories that occupy similar conceptual space). But I think that it is the wrong light in which to see the argument. I see Stewart’s proposal as urging return to a substantially similar state of affairs under the original Joint Criminal Enterprise scheme proposed by the Tadic Appeals Chamber during the early days of the ICTY. Cassese was the prime mover behind the JCE doctrine, and it covered all members of the collective endeavor, regardless of their level of contribution. Eventually, the doctrine was modified to require a heightened contribution requirement, and eventually the leadership level defendants were “de-linked” from the foot soldiers and placed in separate JCEs. But the important point is that the original JCE doctrine included everyone from an architect of the crime (mastermind or hintermann) as well as the foot soldiers or what the later ICTY cases often referred to as the Relevant Physical Perpetrators, or RPP. So under the original JCE doctrine, each member of the group was prosecuted for participating in the JCE. That was, in essence, a unitary model of perpetration. True, as a formal matter, aiding and abetting and accomplice liability survived the creation of JCE, but their relevance and practical import was greatly reduced. Most defendants at the ICTY were prosecuted under a JCE theory and it seemed to me that in most cases JCE could have replaced the other modes of liability given the collective nature of international crimes.
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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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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

[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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19 Mar

[Mark Kersten is a PhD student in International Relations at the London School of Economics] International lawyers will undoubtedly pour over the landmark verdict handed down this week by the International Criminal Court, in which Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was found guilty of conscripting, enlisting and using child soldiers in the long-standing and brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The...

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19 Mar

[Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington and Lee University and author of Reimagining Child Soldiers (OUP, 2012).] A long time in coming, to be sure, and slightly anticlimactic, the Lubanga judgment nonetheless represents a watershed – a first, in any event, for the ICC.  What might the legacies of the Lubanga judgment be? I...

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18 Mar

[James G. Stewart is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia] The first judgment of the International Criminal Court is cause for real celebration, but we must not let our justifiable elation overshadow all that work the judgment leaves undone. Let me begin by rejoicing, before I express concerns. This is the first determination of guilt by a...

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18 Mar

[Dov Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Leiden University. He also blogs at Spreading the Jam where he has already commented on several aspects of the Lubanga Judgment.] The Lubanga trial was not only being scrutinized for the charges that were included (the use of child soldiers in armed conflict). The charges that were not included always loomed close by,...

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