International Criminal Law and Russia: From ‘Nuremberg’ Passion to ‘The Hague’ Prejudice

2017 ◽  
Vol 69 (8) ◽  
pp. 1184-1200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gennady Esakov
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
The Hague

Introduction: Common Civility – International Criminal Law as Cultural Hybrid

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIES VAN SLIEDREGT
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Recent Discussion ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Procedural Law ◽  
The Hague ◽  
National Systems

On 28 and 29 October 2011, a conference was held in The Hague on International Criminal Law (ICL) as a cultural and legal hybrid. The aim of the conference convenors was to facilitate an exchange of thoughts between legal scholars, practitioners, and social scientists on the nature of ICL and to discuss the role (legal) culture plays in international criminal justice. The recent discussion is dominated by the adversarial (common law)–inquisitorial (civil law) dichotomy and centres on the hybrid nature of the procedure in international criminal law. The debate focuses on how a fair and efficient trial can be safeguarded by observing the rights of the accused and other participants through an operational criminal procedure. Sometimes, this clash of legal systems has become an end in itself, resulting in a debate on which system is superior. At least in theory, however, modern international criminal procedural law seems to have overcome the adversarial–inquisitorial dichotomy, since it combines features of both common- and civil-law systems. This unique compromise structure poses a challenge to the practitioners who – although trained in and influenced by their respective national systems – have to apply the procedural norms at the international level and, in doing so, find an appropriate balance between adversarial and inquisitorial features. This is even more challenging since the single elements of the different legal traditions do not fit together seamlessly, leading to myriad, heated disagreements over how to combine them into a single, coherent, workable legal system.

Implications of Stripping Immunities of Heads of States on State Cooperation and the Effectiveness of Trial

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-93
Author(s):  
Patrick Kimani
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Invisibility Cloak ◽  
The Hague ◽  
State Cooperation

The development of international criminal law in the last seven decades has seen a gradual erosion of the integrity of immunities for heads of states. The journey from Nuremberg to The Hague has resulted in a permanent international criminal court. Article 27(2) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (the Rome Statute) disregards immunities as an effective bar to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Heads of states have been stripped of their ‘invisibility cloak’ from international criminal prosecutions. The Rome Statute places its reliance on the situation state’s authorities to cooperate with the ICC in its investigation and prosecution of crimes. A special tension is noticeable in circumstances where an incumbent head of state is accused at ICC while his or her state is placed under the general cooperation obligation. This tension is clearly manifest in the two criminal processes against Uhuru Kenyatta and Al Bashir. Bearing in mind the significant political muscle a sitting head of state wields in their state, it is quite likely that their state’s authorities will be very reluctant to discharge their cooperation obligations. The prosecution of sitting heads of states remains a challenge. Is it time to rethink the structure of the ICC or the implementation of the Statute?

The “Struggle” to Dissolve the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague: Stuck between Constitutional Text and Mission to Pursue Justice

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 548-575
Author(s):  
Avni Puka ◽  
Fisnik Korenica
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Hague ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Eu

Abstract The Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) manifest the first effort of the European Union to participate in an international criminal law project by running a hybrid criminal tribunal, vested with jurisdiction to investigate the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Marty Report. The KSC is entrusted with a mandate originating in a number of legal instruments. A “termination clause” is also present in the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. The Specialist Constitutional Chamber has recently ruled on an amendment discreetly activating the termination of the KSC. The Chamber’s decision outlawing “the amendment” manifests an attempt to reinforce the constitutive nature of the EU’s proprietorship over the KSC, attaching to it an international personality detached from that of Kosovo. The decision contends that the “power to dissolve” the KSC is basically vested with the EU, and Kosovo’s internal law cannot affect that relationship unilaterally. The article argues that the strong adherence of the Chamber’s decision on fundamental rights is an attempt to expose the victim-rights-centered mission of the KSC, clearly leaning towards a legitimacy rather than a legalistic exercise. The article concludes that the decision will have ample effect on the EU’s responsibility over the KSC, the nature of the “power to dissolve”, and the KSC’s mission in the European fundamental rights landscape in general.

‘We Learnt that from The Hague’

2020 ◽  
pp. 498-520
Author(s):  
Kei Hannah Brodersen
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
War Crimes Trials ◽  
The Hague ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Spiral Model

While much attention has been paid to contributions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law, the ICTY’s impact on countries under its jurisdiction and on their criminal justice systems is under-researched. Using Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Serbia as case studies, this chapter discusses the Tribunal’s influence on fairness in war crimes trials that have been conducted in the region since the early 2000s. It shows that the ICTY had only scarce effects on fairness of proceedings, with great impact in BiH and almost absent in Serbia. The difference is explained using the ‘norm cascade model’ and ‘spiral model’, describing how a norm ‘cascades’ from the international level into the national justice system. It shows that the ICTY’s permanent presence in BiH and large absence in Serbia were factors accounting for whether national counterparts followed ICTY jurisprudence and practice.

International Criminology and the Russian Fight against Transnational Obscenity, 1885–1925

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 275-310
Author(s):  
Philippa Hetherington
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Union ◽  
Sexual Crime ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Border Trade ◽  
Penal Law ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
The Hague

This article examines Russian criminologists’ engagements with emergent norms of international criminal law at the fin-de-siècle. In particular, it discusses attempts to end the ‘international traffic in pornography’ from the 1880s onwards, framing these attempts as key elements in the development of Russian ideas about sexual crime more broadly. For pre- and post-revolutionary Russian criminologists involved with the Hague-based International Union for Penal Law, the crime of trafficking in pornography was conceptualized as both a crime against the censor and also an offense that did specific harm to certain social groups, namely women and children. In this way, anxieties about gender and sex lay at the heart of the calls to ban the cross-border trade in obscenity, suggesting a particular biopolitical understanding of international security haunting early twentieth century international criminal law.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document