Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
07 Feb Symposium on Fairness, Equality, and Diversity in Open Source Investigations: The Case To (Re)new Community of Practice for the Open Source Investigative Field
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...16 May Justice Kennedy: "The (Legal) World is Flat"
the other branches have rejected) to interpret the U.S. Constitution. This is new stuff, and I don’t think (based on his own use of it in Lawrence and Roper) that Justice Kennedy himself has come up with an explanation of why it is so important to cite international treaties when interpreting the Constitution. No justice has offered a particularly impressive defense of this practice (see discussion of Ginsburg here and Breyer here). It’s too bad that the Justice can’t do better than simply telling us that the “world is flat”....
09 May Why Does the United States Continue to Oppose International Courts?
pursuit of criminal responsibility and accountability. This is particularly instrumental in conflict-torn societies, whose rebuilding and stabilization efforts rest on political reconciliation through an apolitical execution of justice. These lofty ambitions vested in the ICC are the natural extension of the liberal notion of justice, which the United States’ own eminently rich constitutional tradition has historically upheld. Yet, the ICC’s limited jurisdiction presents an enormous challenge to international justice and is typically delimited by: (i) States accession to treaties; (ii) the UN Security Council’s political alignments, configurations, and the power...
26 May Symposium on Advancing Effective and Comprehensive Reparation for Victims of the War in Ukraine: Towards Effective and Comprehensive Reparations in Ukraine – A Survivor-Led Perspective from The Gambia
[Sirra Ndow is Country Director of ANEKED (The Gambia). ANEKED is a victim/survivor-led organisation advancing transitional justice, reparations, and human rights advocacy through survivor-centred initiatives, and contributes to global narratives on reparative justice from a survivor perspective] Too often, reparations processes focus on compensation, prosecutions, and institutional reforms while neglecting the lived experiences, dignity, and recognition of victims. In doing so, they risk reproducing a textbook model of justice: solid on paper, but hollow in substance. As efforts to operationalise reparations for victims of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine begin to take shape,...18 Oct Philippine withdrawal from the International Criminal Court: “Much ado about nothing” at the Philippine Supreme Court? (Part II)
...hearings, that indicated anxieties about the prospects of international justice, as well as Asia-Pacific neighbourhood regional dynamics. In the Petitioners hearings, while seemingly at a tangent, the court veered into the realm of realpolitik – asking whether the Philippines would get “justice at the United Nations”, and whether the U.S., China and Russia were parties to the Rome Statute. However, this is not irrelevant as it reflects real anxieties of the “imperialist” nature of the ICC and its impact on sovereignty – echoed increasingly forcefully across multiple jurisdictions in the...
24 Jun Options for a Peace Settlement in Ukraine: Options Paper VIII – Sanctions in the Ukraine–Russian War: Proposed Solutions for the Peace Process and War Crimes Prosecutions
...unlikely to be forfeited in conjunction with criminal proceedings and creating a temporary cash flow to provide immediate relief and rebuilding of the most necessary structures. The Role of the ICC in the Peace Settlement Proposal As sanctions are being imposed amidst the commencement of investigations and prosecutions before domestic courts and the ICC, the interplay and cooperation between sanctions, asset recovery, and international criminal justice is crucial to an effective peace settlement and post-conflict justice to ensure funds are available for reparations to victims. Thus, the operation of sanctions...
27 Aug Rohingya Symposium: The UN Security Council, the Rohingya Genocide and the Future of International Justice
...take Myanmar to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for breaching the Genocide Convention. The public announcement of this historic case was made by Gambia’s Justice Minister, Abubacarr Tambadou, at an event co-hosted by Bangladesh and the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect on the margins of the UN General Assembly. When the case commenced at the ICJ in December 2019, The Gambia immediately submitted a request for the Court to issue provisional measures in order to protect the Rohingya people and secure evidence of the crimes that had...07 Mar Alan G. Kaufman Reviews Stephen C. Neff’s ‘Justice in Blue and Gray’
Alan Kaufman, a career national security lawyer and retired Navy JAG, has a fine review-essay of Stephen C. Neff’s Justice in Blue and Gray: A Legal History of the Civil War over at Lawfare. Alan, who is a former student of mine a really long time ago at Harvard Law School as well as an occasional commenter here at OJ, observes in the essay how the law of the Civil War continues to reverberate in the US approach to its conflicts and counterterrorism today. The book is excellent and likewise...02 Jul Justice O’Connor: A Moderate on Internationalism as Well
I have very little to add to the zillions of articles and blog posts about the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and her likely successor. I did want to point out, though, that Justice O’Connor was (not surprisingly) a moderate in the Court’s recent embrace of foreign and international law. Justice O’Connor appears to see some useful analogies to the relationship between state and federal courts. As she writes in an article entitled “Federalism of Free Nations,” As our country moves toward a more international regime of dispute resolution,...
15 Sep Transitional Justice Symposium: Reflections on the Transitional Moment
[ Martin Böhmer is a Professor of Law at the University of Palermo.] Jacob and the angel wrestling and tying. The intriguing cover of Teitel’s book sets the tone. An extraordinary moment of struggle between two who are bound together (tied, that is) but who cannot trust each other. In Bo Burt’s reading God wants His people to love and worship Him, Jacob (like his father and grandfather) wants Him to fulfill His promise. The tie produces unescapable dialogue. Transitional Justice (TJ) analyzes such moments, the moments were antagonists find...