Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

case is actively trying) only and handful of the most responsible perpetrators in their respective jurisdictional contexts. None of the over 121,000 alleged war criminals awaiting prosecution in Ukrainian prisons are accused of being such ‘most responsible’ perpetrators. Arguing in favor of a High War Crimes Court, PILPG experts posit that an extraordinary national tribunal can close the accountability gap for international crimes in Ukraine by “provid[ing] an important additional venue for prosecuting the large number of mid-level perpetrators who might otherwise escape justice.” Discourse on international justice mechanisms for...

...the International Court of Justice. These cases involve largely the same defendants, even if they are substantially differentiated by their scope. These developments demonstrate that the main challenge for victims of atrocity crimes seeking accountability is increasingly not about whether a forum exists, but which forum offers the best opportunity for meaningful justice. Discussions at a two-day workshop in Brisbane between legal practitioner and civil society actors revealed how forum selection is a strategic choice made after careful consideration of several important factors. These include the legal framework, institutional capacity,...

should be clear as to the nature of social and political justice and how these relate, say, to criminal justice. Perhaps forgoing retributive justice has a corrosive effect on social and political justice (or even 'legal' or 'ethical' justice; I'm assuming that, in the end, there's more than family resemblance to the various kinds of justice). In any case, I'm grateful to Professor Weinberger for making me think more carefully about what is at stake here. Seamus I should have also said, in fairness to Professor Ku, that we're still...

[Aakash Chandran (X: @ChandranAakash is the Legal Advocacy and Communications Manager at Asia Justice Coalition.] The international community is currently navigating a turbulent phase marked by armed conflicts, aggression, and manifest violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law. The situation in South, Southeast, and East Asia also continues to present alarming developments, including the escalating situation in Myanmar, exacerbated by the absence of concerted international action. The entrenched impunity in Sri Lanka concerning the civil war has left thousands of victims of atrocity crimes without access to justice,...

...with international justice as a lived reality and not just a mere set of rules. ’Playfulness’ in this context is not the opposite of ‘seriousness’ and is not to be interpreted as a way of bypassing the gravity of the problems addressed by the field of international justice. Quite the opposite, the idea is to utilize the urgency of the current polycrisis to question the solidity of some of the outdated structures in the edifice of international justice and the inability or unwillingness of the actors in the field to...

Our own Peggy McGuiness has just published an article in the Missouri Law Review on “The Internationalism of Justice Blackmun.” When an international scholar thinks of Justice Blackmun a few cases quickly come to mind: Mitsubishi v. Soler, Aerospatiale, Sale, Goldwater, etc. But as McGuiness outlines, his impact on internationalism is far greater than a few odd cases. It also includes nurturing the likes of Harold Koh and Donald Donovan, and authoring a seminal article that has proved instrumental in launching the current rage of reliance on foreign authority in...

...UN’s World Food Programme cutting their food rations, and with the deteriorating security situation inside the camps, many Rohingya find themselves in a dire situation with impunity being but one of many pressing concerns. Through its offices in Cox’s Bazar, Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) provides legal assistance and support to Rohingya survivors in these refugee camps. Having been deported en masse to Bangladesh, and without a fair legal remedy available within Myanmar, Rohingya survivors are forced to rely on pathways for justice outside of Myanmar. A variety of efforts on...

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...

...alleged to have occurred on U.S. soil or in U.S. waters” was quickly rebutted by Justice Breyer, invoking Attorney General Bradford’s 1795 opinion that expressed “no doubt” that a civil suit could be brought under the ATS for violations of the law of nations in Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, Justice Kagan offered a variation of the 1784 Marbois incident, hypothesizing that the French ambassador to Britain was attacked in London by an American citizen who sought refuge in the United States and suggesting that the ATS “contemplated exactly that sort of...

[Indira Rosenthal is a legal consultant in international human rights law and international criminal law, with specialisms in women’s human rights, gender justice, law reform and access to justice. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, University of Tasmania, Australia, researching possible impacts of (mis)understandings of ‘gender’ on accountability for atrocity crimes at the ICC.] As the ICC ‘s third decade and the term of its third Prosecutor, Karim Khan, get underway, forensic examination of its every move continues unabated. This includes its record on investigation...

...to the CAO’s recommendations, national proceedings would not have been needed. But where justice is denied within the institutional legal order, considerations around the perceived independence of an organisation continue to trump the individual right to access justice generally, and a fair trial specifically. It is most unfortunate that international organisations such as the IFC who purport to deliver ‘lasting solutions for development’ choose to engage in conduct that leads to grave denials of justice to already vulnerable people who ought to be the very beneficiaries of their development activity....

[Michael A. Newton is Professor of the Practice of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School] The Kony 2012 campaign had the laudable goal of increasing public awareness in order to aid the search for justice and accountability in the wake of LRA atrocities. In fact, the worldwide attention had the paradoxical effect of demonstrating the lamentable reality that the optimal pathway towards authentic justice for LRA victims in that setting is neither simple nor self-obvious. This is true for a number of reasons which I shall summarize. Firstly, the complexity of...