Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

The blog Making Sense of Darfur has been hosting a symposium on Adam M. Smith’s book After Genocide: Bringing the Devil to Justice, in which the author argues — oversimplifying only slightly — that international criminal trials are always inferior to domestic trials and non-punitive accountability mechanisms. I have neither the time nor the inclination to address the book’s claims at length; interested readers should take a look at the critiques offered by Sarah Nouwen, Sadia al Imam, and Bridget Conley-Zilkic. I just want to highlight a claim that the...

five women are members of the European Court of Justice, two as judges and three as advocates-general. Women account for eight out of eighteen judges on the International Criminal Court; one of them serves as that court’s first vice-president. I think it is interesting to consider Justice Ginsburg’s point about the comparative success of women in the judiciary across jurisdictions. She certainly is correct that the United States is not leading the way on this issue. Of course, until Justice O’Connor’s retirement we had two of nine justices who were...

Justice del Castillo had committed plagiarism and misuse of plagiarized works, holding that Justice del Castillo’s clerk/court researcher accidentally deleted the attributions, which could not have been detected since “the Microsoft word program does not have a function that raises an alarm when original materials are cut up or pruned.” The full text of the decision can be found here: http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/jurisprudence/2010/october2010/10-7-17-SC.htm 7. The newest member of the Court, Justice Lourdes Aranal-Sereno, strongly dissented along with (Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales) from the Court’s findings and showed why plagiarism and misrepresentation was committed...

a larger role for the ICTR together with something along the lines of Truth Commissions, would have better served the myriad ends of justice (transitional, reconciliatory, retributive, etc.) in Rwanda, all things being equal.... * Please see his contribution to Heather Strang and John Braithwaite, eds., Restorative Justice and Civil Society (2001): pp. 35-55. **Alison Des Forges and Timothy Longman, "Legal Responses to Genocide in Rwanda,' in Eric Stover and Harvey M. Weinstein, eds., My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermatn of Mass Atrocity (2004): pp. 49-68...

As Mark writes, “[i]nternational criminal justice largely is operationalized through criminal tribunals. Courtrooms have gained ascendancy through adversarial third-party adjudication, conducted in judicialized settings, and premised on a construction of the individual as the central unit of action.” Mark rejects this “liberal-legal” model of international criminal law; in his view –- and this is the central thesis of his book –- “the preference for criminalization has prompted a shortfall with regard to the consideration and deployment of other legal, regulatory, and transformative mechanisms in the quest for justice,” such as...

Like many lawyers who study constitutional law, I was saddened when I heard last night of the unexpected death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The internet being what it is, commentators have already offered their quick takes on Scalia’s substantial and multifaceted jurisprudential legacy (indeed, I think we’ve already moved on to debating his replacement). Most of these analyses have been fair, but I have been a little irritated with the glib and mostly inaccurate descriptions of Justice Scalia’s attitude toward international law. For instance, Rosa Brooks writes...

...and attempt to outsource the cost of justice, as with Senegal’s claim it would delay the trial of former Chadian President Hissene Habre pending receipt of roughly $38 million for the trial. As unpleasant as those options sound, the alternatives seem even worse. Laudable though the trial was on many levels, Munyaneza clouds more than clarifies the road ahead for international criminal justice. Instead, the way forward requires an uncomfortable discussion on reassessing due process norms and how much justice the international community can afford or impunity it can tolerate....

...with the ideas, problems, and proposals that the symposium brings forth.   In so proceeding, its conveners are deeply cognizant of the positions of privilege that they each occupy—gender for one, class for the other, and whiteness for both. In a dialogue that can, and in some of the pieces included here, does, require a strenuous and wearisome amount of vulnerability on the part of its participants, this symposium seeks to walk the line between making meaningful contributions to the discourse surrounding classism in the international legal profession, and merely creating...

that we and our excellent contributors gained with time and experience. That is how this symposium emerged – it took a village to assemble this “road map for early career scholars” and we are incredibly grateful for everyone who took their time to participate in this project. The breadth and depth of responses evidence both the anxieties but also the generosity, patience, and creativity of the ‘invisible college’.  The first half of the symposium, hosted by Opinio Juris, opens with a post by Eliav Lieblich who offers a nuanced yet...

...of the symposium. For now, I end with a lesson I’ve taken away from this symposium. As each contribution evidences, critical scholars have transformed international legal pedagogy from a site of transmission into one of innovation. Scholars across the Asian and African continents cultivate regional approaches to international law and its pedagogy; Black scholars pursue anti-racist teaching to counteract the prejudices subsumed within the regime; TWAIL scholars expose students to the profusion of critiques the authors of textbooks ignore; and the students of these same scholars mobilise and demand not...

[David Sloss is a Professor of Law at Santa Clara University.] I want to thank Opinio Juris for hosting a symposium on my new book, published last fall by Oxford University Press. I also want to thank the group of distinguished scholars who have agreed to offer their perspectives on The Death of Treaty Supremacy as part of this symposium. I very much look forward to their contributions. The book’s central claim is that an invisible constitutional revolution occurred in the United States in the early 1950s. From the Founding...

[Dr. John Heieck is a criminal defense lawyer in the US and an independent researcher of genocide and human rights studies.] I want to reiterate my thanks to Opinio Juris and the International Commission of Jurists for holding this thought-provoking symposium on my new monograph A Duty to Prevent Genocide: Due Diligence Obligations among the P5. I especially want to thank Professors Jennifer Trahan, Mohamed Helal, and William Schabas for their respective critiques of my book. All three scholars present serious commentaries on the challenges facing the operationalization of the...