In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

20 Oct

to resort to other measures including public diplomacy and social media to raise awareness and mobilize action to ensure that justice prevails. Such measures can form yet another form of accountability — public accountability. If justice for the Haitian victims is too expensive, then civil society must ensure that injustice is not too cheap. Justice will not visit the people of Haiti unless and until — the UN properly investigates its role in the introduction and outbreak of cholera in Haiti, including the reasonableness of the actions taken by the...
20.10.20 | |

09 Apr

saying that international criminal justice should apply equally to all. Hopefully, this accusation of the limited application of universal jurisdiction, will not be used to discredit fair and essential justice proceedings brought by victims seeking closure, truth and accountability. Liberian human rights activists and Secretary General of the Civil Society Human Rights Advocacy Platform of Liberia called the indictment of Alieu Kosiah a “boost to the national justice campaign.” Surely justice, wherever it is meted out, in particular when relentlessly pursued by victims’ groups, should be facilitated and indeed applauded?...
09.04.19 | |

19 Mar

and Lawrence?” Mr. Kneedler: “Justice Ginsburg, I think you can distinguish Roper and Lawrence from the free speech context. In those cases…” Justice Kennedy: “But counsel, if I may, what if Joseph Frederick said that his advocacy of bong hits is central to his own constitutional search to define meaning, to comprehend the universe and to understand the mystery of human life?” Mr. Kneedler: “With all due respect Justice Kennedy, I’m not sure that Joseph Frederick’s personal quest for the mystery of human life through mind-altering drugs should be relevant...
19.03.07 | |

08 Jan

[Yifat Susskind is the Executive Director of MADRE, an international human rights organization dedicated to meeting urgent needs in communities facing crisis and using the human rights framework to create durable social change] For women, girls, and LGBTQI+ persons in Afghanistan, the struggle for justice has never been more urgent. With each passing day, the Taliban is consolidating power while the international community edges toward normalizing relations with Afghanistan’s de facto rulers. This leaves the International Criminal Court (ICC) as one of the few institutions able to secure justice for...
08.01.26 | |

10 Jun

[Lisa J. Laplante is Visiting Assistant Professor at Marquette University Law School] Until recently, immunity measures like amnesties were considered an acceptable part of promoting transitional justice in countries seeking to address past episodes of systematic violations of human rights. The politically sensitive context of countries seeking to broker peace between oppositional forces often outweighed the moral imperative of punishing those responsible for perpetrating human rights atrocities. Latin America exemplified this trend in the 1980s, while also popularizing truth commissions. The resulting truth v. justice debate eventually sidelined criminal trials...
10.06.09 | |

26 Feb

US national. Syria and Myanmar are situations where the most direct routes to pursuing accountability—either the creation of a freestanding international or hybrid criminal tribunal or referral of the situations to the ICC are blocked by the actual or presumptive vetoes of Russia and/or China. (For more on vetoes see my book; see also Opinio Juris book symposium.)  Yet, the US and the international community must not become complacent having created these Mechanisms—which have no capacity to conduct prosecutions. Being able to feed evidence into isolated cases pursued under universal jurisdiction or similar jurisdictional theories...
26.02.21 | |

31 Jul

Article 36(1) of the VCCR, among other things, provides that when a national of a foreign country is arrested or detained, the detainee must be advised of the right to have the detainee’s consulate notified, and that the detainee has the right to regular consultation with consular officials during detention and any trial. The Optional Protocol to the VCCR gives the International Court of Justice compulsory jurisdiction to try disputes that arise out of the interpretation or application of the treaty. This basis of the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction...
31.07.19 | |

11 Mar

This week, we are hosting a symposium on Curtis Bradley’s new book “International Law in the US Legal System“, published last month by Oxford University Press. OUP has kindly agreed to offer Opinio Juris readers a 20% discount, which you can access by clicking on the ad at the right. According to the abstract, the book explores the dynamic intersection between international law and the domestic legal system within the United States and covers both settled principles as well as unresolved issues and areas of controversy. Curtis Bradley considers all...
11.03.13 | |

01 Aug

[Michael Ramsey is a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. He will be posting today and tomorrow on his new book: The Constitution’s Text in Foreign Affairs. Please stay tuned for his posts, as well as for comments by our other symposium participants.] Thanks to Opinio Juris for organizing this symposium and inviting me to participate. Here are a few opening thoughts. The Constitution’s Text in Foreign Affairs (Harvard University Press, 2007) attempts to describe the distribution of foreign affairs powers among the branches of U.S. government...
01.08.07 | |

17 May

...words, it appears that the PTC could order the OTP to open a full investigation into the attack on the flotilla if it disagreed with the OTP’s conclusion that the interests of justice required declining to investigate. Art. 53(3)(b) raises two difficult questions. The first is substantive: what does “interests of justice” mean? That is a very difficult issue, one beyond the scope of this post. Let me simply note here that the primary issue in the debate is whether Art. 53(3)(b) would permit the OTP to decline to investigate...
17.05.13 | |

04 Apr

The new Constitution incorporates a Bill of Rights which significantly strengthens fair trial rights and procedural guarantees within the Kenyan criminal justice system, The Constitution gives effect to a comprehensive range of judicial reforms which fundamentally transform the administration of justice in Kenya. Deficiencies and weaknesses from the past have been specifically targeted to guarantee the independent and impartial dispensation of justice. National courts will now be capable of trying crimes from the post-election violence, including the ICC cases, without the need for legislation to create a special tribunal, thus...
04.04.11 | |

31 Mar

Is Justice Kennedy a treaty lawyer? Listening to him yesterday during his speech to the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, you would think he’s at least been studying up on the subject. As Peggy pointed out, Justice Kennedy’s wide-ranging talk focused most closely on the problem of genocide, and his comments in that regard were forceful and impassioned. But, I also found Kennedy’s remarks interesting for his discussion of treaties generally, which he used to bolster his larger arguments about the need for states to...
31.03.06 | |