scholarly journals s.VII Anxieties, Ch.29 Inequality of Arms Reversed?: Defendants in the Battle for Political Legitimacy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glasius Marlies ◽  
Meijers Tim
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Reverse Inequality ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Set Up ◽  
International Criminal Trials

This chapter discusses a communicative advantage for ‘defiant defendants’, otherwise known as the ‘inequality of arms reversed’. A common critique of international criminal justice is that international criminal trials, when faced with high-profile and charismatic defendants, are basically doomed: either they silence the defendant’s political rhetoric and become show trials, or they let the defendant speak of the bias and inconsistencies in their institutional set-up, thus equally imperilling their legitimacy. This chapter argues that international criminal courts are not doomed by the reverse inequality: the communicative outcomes of international criminal trials remain contingent. For instance, prosecutors can make arguments that are politically and culturally attuned to local audiences. Moreover, the procedure of the trial can influence the defendant’s attitude. This chapter contends that it is possible for prosecutors and judges to acknowledge the political dimension of international criminal processes without turning them into show trials. Indeed, it is desirable for judges and prosecutors to confront the politics of the defendant head on.

s.V Modalities, Ch.19 Epistemological Controversies and Evaluation of Evidence in International Criminal Trials

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klamberg Mark
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Fact Finding ◽  
Evaluation Of Evidence ◽  
International Criminal Trials

This chapter deals with the epistemological challenges posed by the evaluation of evidence in international trials. Unlike common-law juries, who are insulated from evidence deemed by a judge to be potentially irrelevant or prejudicial, international judges receive free access to all evidence in order to fulfill their role as fact-finders. This chapter suggests how judges should undertake that fact-finding obligation. It gives reference to an ‘alternative hypothesis’ standard of decision for evaluating the massive amounts of evidence presented at trial. Given the high-profile collapse of several recent cases at the International Criminal Court due to lack of evidence presented at trial, this chapter can help bring back standards of decision and other evidentiary issues to the center of the discussion.

Victims as a Third Party

2020 ◽  
pp. 309-322
Author(s):  
Liesbeth Zegveld
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Legal Principle ◽  
The Individual ◽  
International Criminal Trials

This chapter explores and challenges the promise of victim participation before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Victims are a key reason for international criminal trials. Indeed, trials are said to be held because of the great numbers of victims the crimes have created. Perpetrators are prosecuted so victims can see justice being done. Yet when it comes to victims who want to claim their own rights before international criminal courts, the picture is less clear. International courts have struggled with how to deal with victims. Responses to victims’ participation in criminal trials have ranged from outright opposition, to reluctant acceptance, to apparent embrace. Even when there seems to be embrace, though, under the surface victims struggle to have their suffering and damage recognized. Victims are merely third-parties in the criminal trial. The charges are not their charges; they may not fit their damage. What is more, courts deal with victims collectively, denying them the individual attention their claims may demand. To make things worse, rather than applying the legal principle of accountability to victims' claims for damage, courts have a tendency to address victims' damage as a humanitarian problem that can be solved through humanitarian assistance.

scholarly journals Trial and (Potential) Error: Conflicting Visions on Reparations Within the ICC System

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Balta ◽  
Manon Bax ◽  
Rianne Letschert
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
International Criminal Trials

Twenty years ago, the International Criminal Court (hereinafter ICC or the Court) was established holding the aim of placing victims at the heart of international criminal justice proceedings and delivering justice to them through, among others, reparations. Article 75 of the Rome Statute lays out the reparations regime, and, in practice, court-ordered reparations are a means of delivering such justice. Focusing on Court decisions on reparations, our analysis takes stock of all developments before the ICC and attempts to highlight the mismatch between characteristics inherent to the objectives of international criminal trials such as providing accountability and punishment of the accused and delivering justice for victims of mass crimes—the so-called procedural challenges. We also submit that the Court is facing conceptual challenges, related to an apparent misunderstanding of the various concepts at stake: reparations as such and the various modalities and channels of enforcing them. We conclude that although the ICC’s reparation regime may not be the best reparative response to provide justice to victims in conflict situations affected by mass victimization, we suggest that improving the ICC’s approach includes, at a minimum, tackling these challenges.

Capital Punishment in Independent Ireland

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Doyle ◽  
Liam O'Callaghan
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Administration Of Justice

This is a comprehensive and nuanced historical survey of the death penalty in Ireland from the immediate post-Civil War period through to its complete abolition. Using original archival material, this book sheds light on the various social, legal and political contexts in which the death penalty operated and was discussed. In Ireland the death penalty served a dual function: as an instrument of punishment in the civilian criminal justice system, and as a weapon to combat periodic threats to the security of the state posed by the IRA. In closely examining cases dealt with in the ordinary criminal courts, this book elucidates ideas of class, gender, community and sanity and how these factors had an impact the administration of justice. The application of the death penalty also had a strong political dimension, most evident in the enactment of emergency legislation and the setting up of military courts specifically targeted at the IRA. As this book demonstrates, the civilian and the political strands converged in the story of the abolition of the death penalty in Ireland. Long after decision-makers accepted that the death penalty was no longer an acceptable punishment for ‘ordinary’ cases of murder, lingering anxieties about the threat of subversives dictated the pace of abolition and the scope of the relevant legislation.

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