Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
06 Dec Justice O’Connor and the Iraq Study Group
I am just now beginning to make my way through the Iraq Study Group report issued today. I wanted to raise one small but interesting issue relating to Justice O’Connor’s service on the study group. We all know various historical examples in which a sitting or former justice served an important political function (John Jay, Robert Jackson, Earl Warren, etc.). But it seems this is one of the few instances in recent memory in which a former Supreme Court justice is part of a team giving political advice to the...12 Nov After Medellin: A Proposed ICJ Decisions Implementation Act
[ Steve Charnovitz is an associate professor of law at The George Washington University Law School. He blogs at the International Economic Law and Policy Blog .] On October 31, 2008, I made a presentation at the ASIL’s Tillar House of a proposal for an “International Court of Justice Decisions Implementation Act.” My proposal is an outgrowth of my essay in the Agora of the July 2008 issue of the American Journal of International Law. The Agora focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in “Medellin v. Texas” and includes...
29 Jun ICC Landmark Trial: History Seems to Be Repeating Itself For Victims of Darfur Crimes
as a whole. She also emphasised that many participating victims (of which there are now 600) believe that justice and accountability for historic crimes in Darfur are central to the creation of lasting peace in Sudan. Therefore, she suggested that the ICC consider continuing gathering evidence during the current conflict for use in future prosecutions, both as a way to deter further violations and to give those affected hope that perpetrators of the current violence will be brought to justice. Highlights of Testimonies of Participating Victims Voices of participating victims...23 Nov Clarifying the Alternative: International Criminal Justice Options for African Union Member States
...on paper only in the form of the Protocol on the Statue of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights and the subsequent 2014 Draft Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. Read through this second Draft Protocol and there emerges details of a mega-court that would subsume the current African Court on Human and Peoples’ Right which would then exist as a “Human and Peoples’ Rights Section”, alongside a “General Affairs” section and an “International Criminal Law”...
17 Dec The Trump Administration’s Subversion of the State Department’s Human Rights Reporting (Part 2)
[ Jessica Zhu graduated with honors from Stanford University and is now a student at Stanford Law School, where she is executive editor of the Stanford Law Review. Beth Van Schaack is a Distinguished Fellow with Stanford’s Center for Human Rights & International Justice and the former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice. She is a co-founder and principal with the Alliance for Diplomacy & Justice.] This is a two-part post analyzing the degradation of the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights reports under U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Part...
09 Apr Missing: Asian Women on the International Bench
on research I conducted as part of the Asia Justice Coalition’s Women in International Justice & Accountability (WIJA) project. The WIJA project aims to empower women leaders in Asia and develop their leadership in international law. I examined the gender and regional representation of judges at four international courts and tribunals. I focused on judges because they optically hold the most important role in courts and are the ‘face’ of judicial work. Given their impartial and representative mandate, judges should ideally represent the global character of international justice. Practically, data...
19 Apr ICC Sanctions Symposium: The United States of America, Racism and Sanctions Meet at the International Criminal Court
...precarious line of caution and subservience and be relegated to the margins if they are racialised as non-White or are nationals of states considered non-Western. International criminal justice remains one of the most paternalistically unrepresentative ‘branches’ of international law. That these sanctions were imposed in the first place and that they remained in place for so long have changed how the ‘subaltern’ will henceforth interact with international criminal justice in general and the ICC in particular. For instance, those who desire to lend their skills, knowledge, expertise and time in...18 May Visualizing International Criminal Justice
I want to call readers’ attention to a remarkable new report on international criminal justice authored by Daniel McLaughlin, a former legal officer at the ECCC, for Fordham’s Leitner Center for International Law & Justice. As the introduction states, the report is an attempt — a very successful one — to visualize information about the criminal tribunals: There is wide awareness, though little true understanding, of the work of the international criminal tribunals. International prosecutions of high-ranking civilian and military leaders, including former heads of state, on charges of crimes...
20 Apr ICC Sanctions Symposium: Sanctions and Exceptionalism
...the somewhat transactional relationship that the USA enjoys with the rest of the world on matters related to justice for the worst atrocities—it appears to act on such atrocities only when it suits its national interests rather than because it is the morally right thing to do. Since George Washington’s infamous 1796 Farewell Address, American foreign policy has prided itself in its ability to maintain the much-needed delicate balance between self-interest and morality. The latter has always been postured as an anchor for the observance of good faith and justice...
14 Feb Justice Prevails over Realpolitik at Koblenz: International Law offers a Rare Glimmer of Hope after a Decade of Disappointments for Syrians
...who secured the conviction by smuggling evidence out of Syria, acting as joint plaintiffs and reliving unimaginable horrors in front of their former tormentor, all at considerable risk to their own welfare and that of their families. However, their victory is bittersweet. As victims’ associations stressed: our satisfaction at this verdict is overshadowed by our long and continuing suffering as we seek our missing loved ones and demand justice for the crimes against us. This important conviction is just a first step on the long and arduous path toward justice....