Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

...passage in foreign territorial seas. At the end, I present an alternative justification under which coastal States may interrupt foreign passage in the territorial sea as a response to non-compliance with human rights obligations, notably where international crimes are concerned. Brief Highlights of the Opinion The question of interest concerns whether coastal States may interrupt the passage of a foreign vessel through their territorial sea “in response to non-compliance with international human rights obligations binding upon those States, including obligations under the UN [2014] Arms Trade Treaty and other relevant...

...the human rights and the criminal justice perspective. This post introduces some of the main concerns about the Tribunal and its approaches and argues that, due to the considerations raised, STL’s contribution to criminal justice and to the reconciliation of the society is limited – in particular considering the efforts spent. An innovative or premature approach to international criminal law by the STL? Two years after the attack on Hariri, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), requested by the Lebanese Government, adopted Resolution 1757 establishing the STL with the purpose...

survived to tell her story, but her unborn child died. When I had asked her why she had waited all day to talk to me – she said, “I want justice.”   Three years later, multiple and intertwining journeys for justice have begun. Many of them have been based upon facts laid out in two reports from the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar which recommended that named senior generals of the Myanmar military should be investigated and prosecuted internationally for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.  As...

...Distributive justice approaches are both forward and backward-looking seeking to improve political and socio-economic conditions overall, but without presuming equality or ignoring historical grievances. The reason for pursuing distributive justice approaches is simple – by addressing real (and perceived) distributive inequities, we can help to prevent future conflicts. Accordingly, distributive justice efforts cannot afford to be treated as mere afterthoughts (if conceived of at all), where the aim of transitional institutions is to address the underlying causes that led to massive human rights violations. In short, scholars and practitioners need...

Law School, a 22 April 1945 memo written by John J. McCloy, then the Assistant Secretary of War and later the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, containing an early list of seven other candidates for Chief Prosecutor. Here is the list: 1. Sidney Alderman, Counsel for Southern Railway and later one of Justice Jackson’s deputies 2. Herman Flaeger (Phleger), founding partner of Brobeck, Phleger, and Harrison in SF 3. John Harlan, then a Colonel in the Air Force, later a Supreme Court Justice 4. Justice Jackson 5. Theodore Kiendl, the...

is credentialed to represent Myanmar at the UN General Assembly, the representative of the National Unity Government or the junta—so urgent.  Specifically, the cracks in the Tatmadaw’s impunity were certain actions taken by Myanmar’s National Unity Government and the international community seeking accountability for the Tatmadaw’s international crimes, both before and as part of the coup. Namely, the resolution, or lack thereof, of the credentials questions could bear on the ongoing processes at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. More generally, the implications for justice and...

[Stephen J. Rapp is a Senior Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Prevention of Genocide and at the Blavatnik School of Government of Oxford University. He was formerly Ambassador-at-Large heading the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the US State Department, and between 2007-2009, was the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. This essay was initially prepared at the request of FIU Law Review for its micro-symposium on The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone by Charles C. Jalloh (Cambridge, 2020). An edited and footnoted version is...

… I am not making an argument against I.C.C.’s existence: In places where there is no functioning government, or the government is hostage to one section of society, or where there is no viable reconciliation process, the international community has a duty to ensure that the court is the guardian of justice. But the pursuit of justice should not replace or undermine ongoing national reconciliation efforts. The foremost challenge facing the I.C.C. is to determine whether its intervention will help or hinder the cause of peace. The wheels of justice...

...sanctioning its key officials had not been contemplated. However, despite these sanctions’ shocking effect for their unlawfulness (see here) or perpetuation of racism (see here), they are only part of a consistent marginalisation of international criminal justice by powerful states. What these sanctions have come to expose is the extent to which powerful states can go to marginalise international criminal justice if it threatens their interests. Contextually, all these events arise from power and control in international criminal justice especially for states with a veto vote at the United Nations...

...are before a legal text full of juridical inaccuracies. It is sufficient to refer to Article 1 […]. Simply, I understand that it lacks of the most elemental requirements of criminal categorisation, and this is something that we as legislators cannot ever ignore. In this sense, allow me members of the Parliament to say that we are transferring to the tribunals of justice a competence that is of the Parliament, or of the Government, but in any case of the tribunals of justice, which is to create law”. This declaration...

[Margaret Ajok is currently the Transitional Justice Advisor at the Governance and Security Programme Secretariat (formerly JLOS), at the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Uganda. She is a lawyer and advocate of the Courts of Judicature of Uganda and is also a task force member for the African Union Women for Transitional Justice Network representing Africa.] Introduction The over two decades war in Northern Uganda between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda led to horrendous and deplorable acts of violence. The affected communities suffered enslavement,...

...the self-same test (at [88]). The Supreme Court went on to say: “The question whether there is a real risk that substantial justice will be unobtainable is generally treated as separate and distinct from the balancing of the connecting factors which lies at the heart of the issue as to proper place, but that is more because it calls for a separate and careful analysis of distinctly different evidence than because it is an inherently different question. If there is a real risk of the denial of substantial justice in...