The Expressive Nature of Law: What We Learn from Conjugal Slavery to Forced Marriage in International Criminal Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie Bunting ◽  
Izevbuwa Kehinde Ikhimiukor
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Trial Chamber ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Forced Marriage ◽  
Sexual Slavery

The March 2016 Confirmation of Charges Decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court in Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen characterized the practice of forced conjugal association as the crime against humanity of ‘other inhumane acts’. This decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber comes amidst an unsettled jurisprudence on the legal characterization of the practice of forced conjugal association. The unsettled nature of the jurisprudence has led to inconsistencies in the legal characterization of forced conjugal association as either forced marriage as an ‘other inhumane act’ or sexual slavery, a variant of the general rubric of slavery. Accordingly, this article analyses the expressive effects of the labelling by contemporary international criminal courts and tribunals of forced conjugal association as either forced marriage as an ‘other inhumane act’ or slavery.

Sexual Violence and the Relevance of the Doctrine of Superior Responsibility in the Light of the Katanga Judgment at the International Criminal Court

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linnea Kortfält
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Superior Responsibility

In this article, I set out to investigate the interplay between sexual violence and various linking theories in international criminal law. I will demonstrate some of the possibilities and shortcomings of various modes of liability available to the International Criminal Court with regard to cases involving sexual violence. In so doing it is necessary to thoroughly explain and discuss the potential reasoning of the Court in these matters. Since the case against Germain Katanga presents a perfect illustration of the distinction in application and analysis of the modes of liability with regard to sexual violence as opposed to other crimes, the reasoning provided in said judgment will be used as a springboard for such an analysis. Therefore the background to the case against Katanga will firstly be presented and the modes of liability as used in this particular case will subsequently be scrutinised. Considering the fact that Katanga was acquitted of sexual violence, this investigation will mostly demonstrate the deficiencies of these modes of liability and in the vacuum left after such an analysis, I will show the potential benefits of utilising the doctrine of superior responsibility in cases involving sexual violence. In my opinion, though fraught with complexities, this doctrine presents the perfect avenue to prosecute the higher echelons of organisations, i.e., the persons that international criminal courts and tribunals are intent on convicting, for sexual violence in particular. Thus, the aim of this article is to highlight the potential benefits of utilising broad charging strategies and more particularly, the importance of including the doctrine of superior responsibility, in sexual violence cases.

14. International Criminal Law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Dixon ◽  
Robert McCorquodale ◽  
Sarah Williams
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Political Will ◽  
National Courts ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals

This chapter addresses the prosecution of crimes in international criminal courts according to international—not national—criminal law. International law has long recognised that certain conduct, for example piracy and slavery, are crimes against international law which may be tried by international bodies or by any State. This principle has been expanded to cover more substantive crimes. International mechanisms for criminal accountability may be established where national courts have failed or are unable to try offenders due to a lack of political will, insufficient resources, deficiencies in national law, and/or ongoing conflict. The establishment and jurisdiction of the existing international criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court, are considered.

30. International criminal justice

2019 ◽  
pp. 645-664
Author(s):  
James Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
National Courts

This chapter discusses the development of international criminal law and institutions, international criminal courts and tribunals, and international criminal justice in national courts. These developments respond to but also reflect repeated failures to prevent serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. The work of the International Criminal Court, specialized criminal tribunals and ‘hybrid’ tribunals is outlined.

The Contestation of Value-Based Norms: Confirmation or Erosion of International Law?

2019 ◽  
pp. 311-334
Author(s):  
Tiyanjana Maluwa
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time ◽  
Normative Powers

The chapter discusses the concepts of shared values and value-based norms. It examines two areas of international law that provide illustrative examples of contestation of value-based norms: the fight against impunity under international criminal law and the debates about the responsibility to protect. It argues that the African Union’s (AU) difference of view with the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the indictment of Omar Al-Bashir is not a rejection of the non-impunity norm, but of the context and sequencing of its application. As regards the right of intervention codified in the Constitutive Act of the AU, Africans states responded to the failure of the Security Council to invoke its existing normative powers in the Rwanda situation by establishing a treaty-based norm of intervention, the first time that a regional international instrument had ever done so. Thus, in both cases one cannot speak of a decline of international law.

scholarly journals The Legacy of the ICTY and ICTR in China

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
Bing Bing Jia
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Tribunal

Legacy is a matter that may become topical when its creator finally stops producing. Normally, the silent years would be many before the thought of legacy enters into open, formal discourse among lawyers and decision-makers. This comment treats the meaning of the word as relative to the circumstances in which it is invoked. The more closely it is used in relation to the present, the more distant it drifts from its literal meaning, to the extent that it denotes what the word “impact” signifies. This essay questions whether the word “legacy” is apt in describing the footprint of the work of the two ad hoctribunals in China, where its influence has, as a matter of fact, been waning ever since the adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998 (“Rome Statute” ). The Chinese example suggests that the work of the tribunals is (at least so far) no more significant to international criminal law than the illustrious Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials of the 1940s. The most major impact (a more apposite term than legacy) of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for China may be that China’s policy with regard to the tribunals, manifested mostly in the United Nations, has determined its approach to the International Criminal Court (“ICC” ). For that, the work of the tribunals could be considered as having left China something in the nature of an indirect legacy.

Part 3 General Principles of Criminal Law: Principes Généraux Du Droit Pénal, Art.27 Irrelevance of official capacity/Défaut de pertinence de la qualité officielle

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Schabas William A
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Head Of State

This chapter comments on Article 27 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Article 27 consists two paragraphs that are often confounded but fulfil different functions. Paragraph 1 denies a defence of official capacity, i.e. official capacity as a Head of State or Government, a member of a Government or parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall not exempt a person from criminal responsibility under the Statute. Paragraph 2 amounts to a renunciation, by States Parties to the Rome Statute, of the immunity of their own Head of State to which they are entitled by virtue of customary international law. In contrast with paragraph 1, it is without precedent in international criminal law instruments.

scholarly journals Practice theory and change in international law: theorizing the development of legal meaning through the interpretive practices of international criminal courts

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Stappert
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Interpretive Practices ◽  
Legal Meaning

AbstractThe question of change has emerged as one of the main conceptual and empirical challenges for International Relations' practice turn. In the context of international law, such a challenge is brought into particularly stark relief due to the significant development of legal meaning through more informal, interpretive avenues, including through the judgments of international courts. This paper develops a framework for theorizing how interpretive legal practices generate normative content change in international law. Specifically, it uses the example of the development of international criminal law through the decisions of international criminal courts to analyze how legal interpretation can lead to normative change in practice. Drawing on interviews conducted with judges and legal officers at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), I analyze how a community of legal practice centered around these courts was able to construct and alter legal meaning in international criminal law, and how such a potential for change was curbed by understandings of the interpretive process and the role of international courts dominant among international lawyers.

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