Geneva Convention Compliance in Iraq and Afghanistan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Grimm Arsenault
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Geneva Convention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
Detainee Abuse

US compliance with the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and Afghanistan appeared to vary with the particular subject matter and battle space. In military operations during the last decade, the United States assessed the legality of virtually every proposed target to avoid the intentional targeting of civilians. Legal specialists also, however, flagrantly overlooked Common Article 3’s minimum prescription that all captured individuals have the right to be treated humanely. This variation in compliance is explained by the shift in mission objectives: When the United States approached these conflicts as purely counterterror operations, the goal was to disrupt the enemy. However, under the population-centric counterinsurgency mission, noncompliance with the Geneva Conventions equated to mission failure. The shift from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency increased US sensitivity to civilian casualties and the operational consequences of detainee abuse. By adapting practice to comply with the Conventions, the people became the prize in the war on terror.

scholarly journals The Strange Fruit of the Tree of Liberty: Lynch Law and Popular Sovereignty in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 819-834
Author(s):  
Michael Gorup
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right

Lynch mobs regularly called on the language of popular sovereignty in their efforts to authorize lynchings, arguing that, as representatives of the people, they retained the right to wield public violence against persons they deemed beyond the protections of due process. Despite political theorists’ renewed interest in popular sovereignty, scholars have not accounted for this sordid history in their genealogies of modern democracy and popular constituent power. I remedy this omission, arguing that spectacle lynchings—ones that occurred in front of large crowds, sometimes numbering in the thousands—operated as public rituals of racialized people-making. In the wake of Reconstruction, when the boundaries of the polity were deeply contested, spectacle lynchings played a constitutive role in affirming and circulating the notion that the sovereign people were white, and that African Americans were their social subordinates.

scholarly journals The Politics of Gun Control in the United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-59
Author(s):  
Vibeke Sofie Sandager Rønnedal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Second Amendment ◽  
The People ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Right ◽  
Standing Army

The discussion of the right to keep and bear arms has been a growing issue in American society during the past two decades. This article examines the origin of the right and whether it is still relevant in contemporary American society. It is found that the Second Amendment was written for two main reasons: to protect the people of the frontier from wildlife and foreign as well as native enemies, and to ensure the citizen militia being armed and ready to fight for a country with a deep-rooted mistrust of a standing army and a strongly centralized government. As neither of these reasons have applied to American society for at least the past century, it is concluded that American society has changed immensely since the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, and that the original purpose of the right to keep and bear arms thus has been outdated long ago.

scholarly journals THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL AND A FAST TRIAL: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE UNITED STATES

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-13
Author(s):  
V.V. Berch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jury Trial ◽  
Professional Activity ◽  
The People ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Right ◽  
Speedy Trial

The article is devoted to the consideration of the constitutional right to a trial by a jury, as well as the right to a speedy trial in accordance with the provisions of the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution. It is noted that as of today in Ukraine there is a question of ensuring the actual (real) participation of the people in the administration of justice and the creation of an appropriate mechanism for the realization of such a right of the people. It is established that the permanent evolution of the jury trial in the world as a full-fledged element of participatory democracy allows us to assert the possibility of applying the best foreign experience in this area and for Ukraine. It is noted that the jury trial, which is typical for the United States, is undoubtedly a consequence of the borrowing of English legal customs, but has its own special features. It has been established that the right to a speedy trial should be distinguished from other constitutional rights, as it concerns the interests of society and the justice system more than the interests of the accused. The circumstances that suggest whether a trial is in fact "fast" are rather vague, as each such proceeding is to some extent unique. The requirements for members of the jury are set out in the Jury Selection Act. It is noted that the release of jurors varies depending on the state. One of the grounds for such dismissal is professional activity. For example, doctors, lawyers, public figures, police or firefighters. At the same time, this practice is gradually ceasing to be natural. It is concluded that the jury trial as a form of public participation in the administration of justice is undoubtedly a democratic legal institution. Direct democracy in the exercise of judicial power, which is carried out in compliance with the principles of publicity and adversarial proceedings promotes the establishment of citizens' faith in the fairness of judicial decisions.  

The first modern codification of the Law of War: Francis Lieber and General Orders No. 100

1963 ◽  
Vol 3 (25) ◽  
pp. 171-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. Baxter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Geneva Convention ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Hague ◽  
The Law ◽  
One Year

Mr. Henri Coursier, of the Legal Department of the ICRC, published some time ago a study on “Francis Lieber and the Laws of War” in the International Review, together with a French translation of Orders No. 100 relative to the behaviour of the United States Armies in the field (the famous “Lieber Laws”), the object of which was to have the principles of international law applied during the American civil war (1861–1865). These orders which were immediately recognized and appreciated by the principal lawyers of the time, had a great influence on the future of the law of nations, since it can be said that the Hague Regulations, which sprang from the 1899 and 1907 Peace Conferences, were very largely inspired by them, and several provisions of the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, stem from the same source. It was to Lieber that the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, appealed to establish this Code which was promulgated in 1863, thus preceding by one year the First Geneva Convention.

Judicial Review and the Military Commissions Act: On Striking the Right Balance

2007 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 344-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Martin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
Military Commissions ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Military

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld seemed a promising example of a special form of judicial role. Abstaining from deploying its ultimate power to judge the constitutionality of an action of a political branch, the United States Supreme Court used statutory construction to give a strong nudge in a direction favorable to human rights. It negated a questionable and controversial policy—President George W. Bush’s unilateral establishment of military commissions to try terrorist suspects by means of reduced procedures—and essentially remanded the matter to Congress. The initial fruits of that remand, the Military Commissions Act (MCA), came as a disappointment. The Act cuts back on judicial review of the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo and other U.S. detention sites overseas; it limits certain key protections available to the accused in a military commission proceeding, as compared to courts-martial; and it takes a crabbed view of the requirements of common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions—at least as applied to the actions of U.S. agents. Nonetheless, further judicial and congressional reconsideration is certainly possible—and highly desirable.

The Extent and Limitations of the Treaty-Making Power Under the Constitution

1907 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 636-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chandler P. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right

The power to make treaties with other nations is an inherent attribute of the sovereign power of an independent nation.Where the treaty-making power is exercised by the sovereign power of a nation, the right to treat with other nations rests wholly in sovereignty and extends to every question pertaining to international relations.Where, however, the treaty-making power is not exercised by the sovereign power of the nation as a whole, but has been delegated to a branch of the government by which it is exercised in a representative capacity, the treaty-making power there, although it arises from sovereignty, rests in grant, and can be exercised only to the extent of and in accordance with the terms fixed by the grant.So in the United States, where the people, as the sovereign power, have delegated through the medium of their State conventions or State legislatures the treaty-making power to a designated section of the Federal Government under the Constitution, such power rests in grant and is to be measured and exercised under the terms of such grant.

Explaining Ethnoreligious Minority Targeting: Variation in U.S. Anti-Semitic Incidents

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 770-787
Author(s):  
Ayal Feinberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hate Crimes ◽  
Target Group ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Hate Groups ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
The Right ◽  
Group Concentration

Over the last two decades alone, the United States has suffered well over ten thousand religion-motivated hate crimes. While racism and religion-motivated prejudice have received considerable attention following the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville that resulted in deadly violence, there is little systematic scholarship evaluating where and when incidents targeting ethnoreligious minorities by non-state actors are likely to occur. Utilizing the FBI’s reported anti-Semitic hate crime data from 2001–2014, my main theoretical and empirical exercise is to determine which factors best explain where and when American ethnoreligious groups are likely to be targeted. I propose that there are four essential mechanisms necessary to explain variation in minority targeting: “opportunity” (target group concentration), “distinguishability” (target group visibility), “stimuli” (events increasing target group salience) and “organization” (hate group quantity). My models show that variables falling within each of these theoretical concepts significantly explain variation in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States. Of particular importance for scholars and practitioners alike, Israeli military operations and the number of active hate groups within a state play a major role in explaining anti-Semitic incident variation.

Slavery's Legalism: Lawyers and the Commercial Routine of Slavery

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 571-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Simard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
Legal Training ◽  
The Way

Eugenius Aristides Nisbet played a critical role in Georgia's secession from the United States. Elected as a delegate to Georgia's 1861 secession convention, Nisbet introduced a resolution in favor of severing ties with the Union, and he led the committee that drafted his state's secession ordinance. Nisbet was a trained lawyer who had served on the Georgia Supreme Court, and his legal training shaped the way that he viewed secession. He believed that the Constitution did not give states the right to dissolve the Union; instead, this power rested solely in the people, and he framed the resolution and ordinance accordingly. Thanks in part to Nisbet, it was the “people of the State of Georgia” who “repealed, rescinded and abrogated” their ratification of the Constitution in 1788.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document