Rwanda's national criminal courts and the International Tribunal

1997 ◽  
Vol 37 (321) ◽  
pp. 717-731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Dubois
Keyword(s):  
International Tribunal ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
National Courts ◽  
Complementary Nature ◽  
International Tribunals

Questions inevitably arise about the concurrent competence and complementary nature of an international tribunal and national courts, and about cooperation between them. Those questions may well apply to any State on earth because, by virtue of the principle of universal competence, many crimes which international tribunals are competent to try may also be tried by any State irrespective of the place where they are committed or the nationality of the perpetrator.

The Puzzle of Atrocity Criminalization

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Mark S. Berlin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Qualitative Case Studies ◽  
National Courts ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
Quantitative Analyses

Why do governments take atrocity offenses, like genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, from international law and legislate them into domestic criminal law, empowering national courts to prosecute their own, and sometimes other states’, government and military officials? The question is important, because the international community has constructed an international legal regime to prosecute the most serious human rights violations, but that regime is designed to rely primarily on domestic criminal courts to try offenders. To fulfill this role, domestic courts often require specific legislation that defines and criminalizes these offenses in national law. Yet, the adoption of national atrocity laws is puzzling, since in a number of ways, these laws appear to threaten states’ interests. This introductory chapter highlights the puzzle of atrocity criminalization and discusses its importance for the functioning of the international atrocity regime. It then situates this study in existing literatures and highlights the book’s contributions to research on atrocity justice, human rights, and international law. Next, it summarizes the book’s main arguments and details the study’s multi-method research design, which combines quantitative analyses of new, original datasets with in-depth qualitative case studies of Guatemala, Colombia, Poland, and the Maldives.

Part III The Right to Justice, B Distribution of Jurisdiction between National, Foreign, International, and Internationalized Courts, Principle 20 Jurisdiction of International and Internationalized Criminal Tribunals

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Schabas William A
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Justice System ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
National Courts ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
Final Sentence ◽  
The Right

Principle 20 is concerned with the jurisdiction of international and internationalized criminal tribunals regarding the prosecution of war crimes and other atrocities. The word ‘impunity’, defined at the beginning of the United Nations Updated Set of Principles, implies punishment or some similar sanction. It inexorably directs us towards judicial activity of criminal courts or the lack of it. The first sentence of Principle 20 is addressed to the national justice system, while the second sentence focuses on the international and internationalized criminal tribunals and their relationship to national courts. The final sentence of Principle 20 requires States to ‘fully satisfy their legal obligations’ with respect to international and internationalized criminal tribunals. This chapter first provides a contextual and historical background on Principle 20 before discussing its theoretical framework and how it has been observed in practice.

The Relations Between International Tribunals of Arbitration and the Jurisdiction of National Courts

1909 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elihu Root
Keyword(s):  
Judicial System ◽  
Special Consideration ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
International Arbitration ◽  
National Courts ◽  
International Tribunals ◽  
The Government

The growing tendency towards international arbitration brings into special consideration and importance the relation between the jurisdiction of national courts of justice and international tribunals of arbitration.When one nation urges claims in behalf of its citizens upon the government of another nation and proposes arbitration, how far doea that other nation’s respect for its own independent sovereignty and for the integrity of its own judicial system require it to insist that the claims be submitted for final decision to its own national courts?The true basis for the consideration of this question is in the nature oi the obligation which constrains a nation to submit questions to any tribunal whatever.

How Can International Criminal Courts Have a Greater Impact on National Criminal Proceedings? Lessons from the First Two Decades of International Criminal Justice in Operation

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuval Shany
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
International Courts ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
National Courts ◽  
Geographical Regions ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
The Impact

International actors and observers have afforded greater attention in recent years to the role of national courts in bringing to justice perpetrators of international crimes. Not only are national courts typically less expensive to operate than international courts, they also enjoy at times more legitimacy in the eyes of local constituencies than their international counterparts. They can also reach deeper into society and cast a wider net than international criminal courts. Indeed, there is an increased tendency to view international criminal courts as mechanisms primarily designed to support and complement the work of national criminal procedures, and to pay closer attention to the interaction between the two sets of judicial institutions. It is against this background that the Project on Studying the Impact of International Courts in Domestic Criminal Procedures in Mass Atrocity Cases (the DOMAC project) has sought to draw lessons from the experience accumulated by the interactions that took place between national and international courts in the two decades that have passed since the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. This was done in the hope that such lessons may guide such interactions in the future. Indeed, DOMAC reports have looked into interactions relating to specific legal aspects (applicable laws, prosecution rates, sentencing policies and capacity development) and/or at specific geographical regions (for example, the Balkans, Africa, Latin America, East Timor) and provide many interesting stories of success and failure, from which valuable lessons can be learned. The purpose of this article is to offer, on the basis of the said DOMAC reports, some general observations on the impact of international courts on domestic criminal processes (in the aftermath of mass atrocity situations), and to discuss the structural deficiencies that may have led until now to sub-optimal levels of cooperation and division of labour between international and national criminal procedures. On the basis of these critical observations, a number of general recommendations for future policy planners will be considered. The article first describes some of the main impacts of international courts on domestic courts handling mass atrocity cases. It then discusses four overarching problems, which may have hampered such interactions: the lack of a comprehensive legal response to mass atrocities, inadequate allocation of resources, the absence of ultimate responsibility over the international response, and legitimacy deficits. The concluding section sketches a number of proposals based on the discussion in the two immediately preceding sections.

scholarly journals PENGADILAN HIBRIDA (HYBRID COURT) SEBAGAI ALTERNATIF PENANGANAN KEJAHATAN INTERNASIONAL

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Arie Siswanto
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
International Community ◽  
Legal Institution ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
World War ◽  
International Support ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Timor Leste ◽  
International Tribunals

<p><strong>Abstrak</strong><br />Sejak akhir Perang Dunia II, masyarakat internasional menyaksikan meningkatnya upaya serius untuk menanggulangi kejahatan internasional. Selain pengadilan pidana nasional dan mahkamah internasional murni, forum yang baru-baru ini digunakan untuk menangani kejahatan internasional adalah pengadilan hibrida yang telah dibentuk di beberapa negara seperti Kamboja, Sierra Leone dan Timor-Leste. Pengadilan hibrida tersebut dibentuk dengan latar belakang politik berbeda-beda, tetapi sebagai institusi yuridis, pembentukannya seyogianya didasarkan pada instrumen yuridis. Artikel ini mengidentifikasi ada tiga pola dalam pembentukan pengadilan hibrida, yaitu: pembentukan pengadilan hibrida atas dasar perjanjian antara PBB dan negara terkait, pembentukan pengadilan hibrida oleh PBB atau pemerintahan internasional dan pembentukan pengadilan hibrida oleh suatu negara yang kemudian memperoleh dukungan masyarakat internasional.</p><p><strong>Abstract</strong><br />Since the end of World War II, the international community witnessed the increasingly serious efforts to deal with the international crimes. Besides the domestic criminal courts and purely international tribunals, the forum that is also recently used to handle international crimes is the hybrid courts that have been established in several places such as in Cambodia, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste. Hybrid courts are established from different political backgrounds, but as a legal institution, its establishment was necessarily based on legal instruments. This paper identifies that there are three patterns in the formation of hybrid court, which are: the establishment of a hybrid court based on an agreement between the UN and the relevant state, the establishment of a hybrid court by the UN or international administration and the establishment of a hybrid court by a country which later gains greater international support.</p>

s.III Rationales, Ch.11 Courting Failure: When Are International Criminal Courts Likely to be Believed by Local Audiences?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milanović Marko
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Social Response ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Tribunals

This chapter asks whether international tribunals are capable of healing a traumatized society. In that sense, it is not enough that a tribunal punish the guilty, it must also produce a social awakening concerning the community’s own culpability for the wrongdoing. Drawing on an empirical evaluation of the social response to the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the chapter questions whether this can occur. At least in the case of the ICTY—otherwise regarded as one of the most successful international tribunals—the work of the Tribunal has been shockingly ineffective because some sectors of the public simply refuse to accept the conclusions that the Tribunal has drawn. The chapter then broadens this conclusion into a general theory: that the work of a tribunal will be viewed positively by the local population unless the Tribunal is a threat to local elites who have the power to shape public opinion against the Tribunal.

Escaping by Design?

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Maurer
Keyword(s):  
Sovereign Immunity ◽  
National Courts ◽  
International Tribunals ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Foreign Governments ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Private Investors ◽  
The Right

This chapter recounts how over the course of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s a series of small legal and political innovations began to allow private investors to use international tribunals to sue foreign governments and then use American and European courts to enforce the decisions. Before 1945, the doctrine of absolute sovereign immunity held that no state could be held accountable for its actions in the courts of another state. After 1945, reforms began to chip away at sovereign immunity. Reforms arose from efforts to depoliticize investment disputes: first by giving private investors the right to take foreign governments to arbitration without the need to have their home government “espouse” the claim; then by giving national courts the right to enforce arbitration judgments against foreign governments.

Part III Guide to Key Jurisdictional Issues, 15 Breach of Treaty Claims and Breach of Contract Claims: When Can an International Tribunal Exercise Jurisdiction?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandrov Stanimir A
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Investor ◽  
International Tribunal ◽  
Breach Of Contract ◽  
Foreign Investors ◽  
Host State ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
International Tribunals ◽  
Investment Treaties

Foreign investors invest in a host state via a contract between the foreign investor and an entity or instrumentality of the host state. Disputes between investors and host states under investment treaties often arise out of breaches of these contracts. In such cases, international tribunals must assess whether the asserted claims rise to the level of a breach of a state’s international obligations. More than a decade ago, the decisions on jurisdiction in SGS v Pakistan and SGS v Philippines brought this issue into the spotlight. These decisions, often perceived as contradictory, deal with the jurisdiction of treaty-based tribunals over claims for a breach of contract. This chapter reviews the seeming confusion regarding the interplay between treaty claims and contract claims and discusses how to dispel any confusion.

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