Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

Justice head Gene Fidell on military justice systems worldwide. Here’s a description: Developments in the field of military justice have been coming at an extraordinary pace for the last several years, both in the United States and around the world. Some of these developments have been wise, some have not. In some respects, there has been remarkable resistance to change. The purpose of this blog will be to identify and comment on developments in the reform of military justice from a national and global perspective. Welcome to the blogosphere GMJR!...

perpetrators across the globe, a wealth of previously elusive information has opened up to bolster justice and truth-telling efforts, in turn spurring the growth of the open source investigative field over the last decade. However, the existing community of practice in this field is non-functioning. The status quo is for outsider researchers to form an echo chamber, mirroring, contributing to, and entrenching harms already thriving in the documentation-to-justice pipeline. Instead, how do we take good intention and turn it into truly good practice? The issues discussed below demonstrate flawed approaches...

[Anna Hankings-Evans is a German-Ghanaian attorney with focus on foreign investments into Sub-Saharan Africa.] It was a pleasure reading Andreas Buser’s book on the development and potential transformation of International Economic Law through the engagement of Emerging Powers. The book carefully weighs the perspectives of powerful and less powerful States to dissect and challenge what has been conventionally understood as the truth. Power is indeed a factor significantly shaping International Law. Yet, it has rarely gained prominence in academic literature beyond its alleged dichotomy and the disruptive and revolutionary conceptualization...

While we are on the subject of Michael Ramsey’s book, I thought I would note that Justice Samuel Alito is currently teaching at Pepperdine Law School a two-week seminar from July 30 to August 10 on the War Powers Clause. The public announcement about the course is available here. According to the announcement, “Justice Alito indicated that the question of war and peace is fraught with difficulty, and it was not his intention to state a definitive view. Instead, he encouraged the students to remain open to competing considerations. Professor...

[Jennifer Keene-McCann is Fellow, Research and Policy at the Asia Justice Coalition and is based in Melbourne/Naarm, Australia.] As international lawyers we have many tools at our disposal to assist survivors of international crimes in a way that is meaningful and reflective of their experience. Consider the atrocities against the Rohingya. Four years on from the latest iteration of violence, there has been tremendous movement in the international community using the legal avenues available. In these four years, there has been: an international fact-finding mission (‘IFFM’) (actually established in March...

...undertaken emergency action in Mali by providing cultural heritage protection trainings to UN personnel but also to the Malian armed forces. An increase and strategic implementation of similar measures can contribute to the goals of instilling a sense of safety to the already traumatized victims and achieving sustainable justice. At the same time, the Court returned to concept of “deterrence” that it had employed in the Lubanga order, even though it had chosen to depart from this language entirely in the Katanga decision. More specifically, the Court in Lubanga had...

...limited so register here to claim your spot! Decolonizing International Justice: Strategies Towards Structural Justice for Slavery and Colonial Crimes: On the occasion of the 22nd session of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court, the Permanent Missions to the United Nations of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Mexico and Argentina, the Emergent Justice Collective, UN Women, Human Rights Watch, Justice Rapid Response, Promise Institute at UCLA Law and the Center for Justice and Accountability are pleased to invite you to this side event on 5 December...

...the byzantine administrative and personnel rules that is so much of the UN management system did not apply to us. The UN is simply incapable of administering international justice in an effective and efficient manner. Because the Special Court was not tied to these archaic management principles we were able to move fast, with less cost, with a lean dedicated team of people not focused on a UN career (where initiative can be frowned on) but on seeking justice for victims of international crimes. Alas, the International Criminal Court has...

with broad policy discretion to approve or disapprove domestic transitional justice policies without the assistance of meaningful legal standards, then justifying the ICC becomes a more difficult proposition. My Article takes up this problem through a focused analysis of the ICC’s response to the Ugandan peace process. My three principal claims are as follows: first, the Rome Statute does not, in fact, provide meaningful guidance to the Court as it navigates the particular dilemmas of transitional justice in Uganda. Second, the development of ex ante guidelines to cabin prosecutorial discretion-a...

...assessing individual criminal responsibility at the Court and raise questions about the implications thereof for international criminal justice. Collective crimes, individual responsibility International criminal justice is concerned with the ‘most serious’ crimes and with the ‘most responsible’ individuals that stand behind those crimes. The Nuremberg tribunal was established to try the ‘major war criminals’ of the European Axis. Similarly, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)’s completion strategy envisioned that ‘the most senior leaders suspected of being most responsible’ for the crimes in the Former Yugoslavia would be...

...the conduct alleged to have occurred in the United States was not relevant. The facts alleged in Cardona certainly seem sufficient to recognize a cause of action under the criteria set forth in Justice Breyer’s concurring opinion. Four Justices joined that opinion, and it takes only four votes to grant cert. If those Justices think the facts in Cardona are sufficiently egregious to persuade Justice Kennedy that an ATS cause of action against U.S. corporations should exist in at least some circumstances, they could well vote to hear the case....

At International Criminal Law Bureau, Kirsty Sutherland calls attention to a surprise moment during the Taylor verdict that has received, to the best of my knowledge, absolutely no attention from the media: In an unexpected turn of events, as Justice Lussick (Presiding), Justice Doherty and Justice Sebutinde rose to leave the courtroom after delivering the verdict, Justice Sow addressed the Court: “The only moment where a Judge can express his opinion is during the deliberations or in the courtroom, and, pursuant to the Rules, when there are no serious deliberations,...