Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
20 Apr Kony 2012: The Complex Kaleidoscope of Transitional Justice in Uganda
[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...
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...
11 Jan ICC Preliminary Examinations – Where is the Gender Analysis?
[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...
17 Apr Strategies for Appealing the Afghanistan Decision
don’t see how the judges could in good conscience arrogate to themselves the final say over whether the OTP can investigate horrific crimes in Afghanistan involving tens of thousands of victims (and perpetrators from the most powerful state in the world). Whether the PTC took the correct approach to the interests of justice is precisely the kind of legal issue that screams out for appellate consideration — particularly in light of the fact that the PTC gave the OTP absolutely no warning that the interests of justice would determine the...
28 Jun Suing Corporations for Violating International Law: A Step Forward
in three separate opinions, by five justices, on both sides of the Court’s usual philosophical divide. Joined by Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch addressed corporate liability at some length. “Nowhere,” he wrote, does the text of the ATS “suggest that anything depends on whether the defendant happens to be a person or a corporation.” Reviewing the long history of tort suits against corporations, he summarized: “Causes of action in tort normally focus on wrongs and injuries, not who is responsible for them.” In a separate opinion, Justice Alito added that “if...15 May Guest Post: The Anders Kompass Case–A Moment of Opportunity for the UN Internal Justice System
...justice system where cases often took years to resolve. In 2009, after decades of effort, the UN comprehensively redesigned its internal justice system, creating the UNDT and the UNAT. For a discussion, see an earlier article by the author here. So, is the redesigned system working? The Kompass case is a prime example that while much more needs to be done, progress has been made. What did the UNDT decide in the Kompass case? Bearing in mind that the merits of the case have not yet been determined, on the...09 Feb Why the Piracy Police Isn’t Working
...is easier than prosecuting them. Britain prefers outsourcing the prosecution to Third World states. Yet if international justice and universal jurisdiction fails here, it will be hard to take it seriously elsewhere. Thus members of the international naval force should themselves bring the offenders they catch to justice. Some of the difficulties can be addressed by shipboard court-martials, or by bringing to Kenya the precedent of the special court created to try Libyan agents in Lockerbie air bombing: Scottish judges held court in a base in Holland designated part of...24 Jan McGuinness on Justice Blackmun’s Internationalism
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...