Alien Tort Claims Act—genocide—war crimes—violations of international law by nonstate actors: Kadic v. Karadzic. 70 F.3d 232, cert, denied, 64 U.S.L.W. 3832 (June 18, 1996)

1996 ◽  
Vol 90 (4) ◽  
pp. 658-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Hippler Bello ◽  
Theodore R. Posner

In a suit brought by Bosnian nationals against Radovan Karadzic, die U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that, under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a U.S. district court may exercise jurisdiction over a nonstate actor accused of committing genocide or war crimes in violation of international law. Relying on various international agreements, including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions, the court found that, under modern international law, genocide and war crimes are universally condemned regardless of whether the perpetrator is die agent of a state or an independent, nonstate actor. However, the court declined to extend its holding beyond these two categories of international law violations, finding that no similar consensus exists widi respect to more commonplace violations such as torture and summary execution; the current state of international law with respect to these acts concerns state actors only, according to die court.

Author(s):  
Dean Aszkielowicz

Long before the Second World War ended, the Allies were planning to prosecute Axis war criminals, including both those in positions of leadership and the perpetrators of individual crimes. There was no standing war crimes court at the end of the Second World War, however, and the post-war trials were a watershed in international law. For the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo, Allied planners drew on the development of international humanitarian law and international agreements signed by the combatants over the decades preceding the war. The vast majority of war criminals who were prosecuted did not face the court at Nuremberg or Tokyo: they appeared before national military tribunals which were conducted according to each prosecuting country’s war crimes law. The Australian War Crimes Act passed through the parliament in October 1945, shortly before trials began.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arif Rohman

Abstrac Almost every case of armed conflict both internal conflict and inter-state conflicts, violations that fall into the category of crimes against humanity. One such crime is sexual slavery. Nevertheless, the true multiple instrument products have set about sexual slavery, but in fact violations still occur, so how to regulate the instrument set up and how the application of the instrument. The approach used in this study a statutory approach and approach the case, it is intended to determine the international instruments which regulate and application of the crime of sexual slavery. Sexual slavery has been set up in several instruments and is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, Additional Protocol II of 1977, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Rome Statute, anti-torture convention so that it can be regarded as war crimes. Sexual slavery is expressed as slavery not as rape. Evidently some tribunal (ICTY, ICTR, Tokyo Tribunal, and ICC) which has been in effect and entrap the perpetrators of sexual slavery was found guilty.Key words: Sexual slavery, Crime Humanity, War Crimes and International Law


1984 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 783-810 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl M. Meessen

When, on October 24, 1983, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California handed down its decision in Timberlane Lumber Co. v. Bank of America and denied U.S. jurisdiction out of regard for the Honduran “system of justice,” there may have been some surprise that the case was still pending. The Timberlane decision of 1976 of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which remanded the matter to the district court, had already become a classic, even though it was preceded by the 1968 decision in United States v. First National City Bank on the production of documents located abroad. The Timberlane approach outlined by Judge Choy, under which the exercise of antitrust jurisdiction has to be restrained by a case-by-case analysis of various factors, was widely discussed (and usually praised) in legal writing, and was also followed by federal courts of the Second, Third, Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits.


1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 380-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Wald

Appellants sued President Reagan and other executive branch officials in the U.S. district court to enjoin U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguán resistance forces (contras), alleging that the aid violated the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, the United Nations Charter and customary international law. The district court, in an unpublished opinion, dismissed the complaint as presenting nonjusticiable political questions. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (per Mikva, J.), affirming the dismissal on different grounds, held that (1) the trial court’s blanket invocation of the political question doctrine was inappropriate; (2) the statute funding the contras prevails over any earlier obligations under treaties or customary international law; (3) individuals have no private right of action to enforce decisions of the International Court of Justice; (4) adherence to an ICJ judgment rendered under a disputed assertion of compulsory jurisdiction is not required as a matter of jus cogens; and (5) plaintiffs had failed to show that U.S. government support of the contras caused their injuries or was so arbitrary and unreasonable as to violate their Fifth Amendment rights.


Author(s):  
Lachezar Yanev

AbstractThis article focuses on the MH17 Trial that is currently underway in the Netherlands, dealing with the shooting down of a civilian aircraft over Eastern Ukraine and the resulting deaths of all 298 persons on board. Two legal questions arising from the prosecutorial strategy to charge the four accused with ‘ordinary’ crimes under the Dutch Criminal Code—instead of with war crimes—are studied here. First, the jurisdictional basis on which the District Court of The Hague is trying MH17, and its effect on the applicable laws, is examined. It is argued that, contrary to what the Prosecution has submitted, jurisdiction over the killing of the 93 non-Dutch nationals on board of flight MH17 can only be established on the basis of the less known title of delegated (representative) jurisdiction: a conclusion that also brings certain legal requirements. Second, this paper analyzes the way the MH17 Prosecutor defined the notion of ‘combatant’s privilege’ under international humanitarian law and his arguments for rejecting a combatant status for the separatist armed forces that shot down flight MH17 over Eastern Ukraine. All this analysis is then used to explain why it was indeed more sensible for the Prosecution to charge the four accused with murder and intentionally causing an aircraft to crash under Dutch criminal law, than with war crimes under international law.


2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 151-155
Author(s):  
Melissa Loja

International issues that are resolved traditionally through agreements between states are managed currently through agreements between government agencies and corporate entities. Government agencies and corporate entities are nonstate actors that have no formal capacity to engage in international lawmaking. Are their international agreements a source of international law?


1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 930-937 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Henkin

In Garcia-Mir, the district court found that prolonged detention of the undocumented aliens was, in the circumstances, “arbitrary,” and therefore a violation of international law. But it also held that even though it was in violation of international law, the courts would not order an end to the detention because it had been authorized by the Attorney General. The court of appeals affirmed.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-205
Author(s):  
choeffel Amy

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld, in Presbyterian Medical Center of the University of Pennsylvania Health System v. Shalala, 170 F.3d 1146 (D.C. Cir. 1999), a federal district court ruling granting summary judgment to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) in a case in which Presbyterian Medical Center (PMC) challenged Medicare's requirement of contemporaneous documentation of $828,000 in graduate medical education (GME) expenses prior to increasing reimbursement amounts. DHHS Secretary Donna Shalala denied PMC's request for reimbursement for increased GME costs. The appellants then brought suit in federal court challenging the legality of an interpretative rule that requires requested increases in reimbursement to be supported by contemporaneous documentation. PMC also alleged that an error was made in the administrative proceedings to prejudice its claims because Aetna, the hospital's fiscal intermediary, failed to provide the hospital with a written report explaining why it was denied the GME reimbursement.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-103
Author(s):  
Komang Sukaniasa

International agreements are agreements between international subjects that give rise to binding obligations in international rights, which can be bilateral or multilateral. Based on these opinions, an understanding can be taken that international treaties are agreements or agreements entered into by two or more countries as subjects of international law that aim to cause certain legal consequences. International agreements, whether ratified or through approval or acceptance or accession, or other methods that are permitted, have the same binding force as ratified international treaties established in the Ratification Law of International Treaties. Once again, it is equally valid and binding on the state. Therefore, the authors consider that the position of international treaties are not made in the form of the Ratification Act of the International Agreement but are binding and apply to Indonesia. Then Damos Dumoli Agusman argues that ratification originates from the conception of international treaty law which is interpreted as an act of confirmation from a country of the legal acts of its envoys or representatives who have signed an agreement as a sign of agreement to be bound by the agreement.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam MCFARLAND ◽  
Katarzyna HAMER

Raphael Lemkin is hardly known to a Polish audiences. One of the most honored Poles of theXX century, forever revered in the history of human rights, nominated six times for the Nobel PeacePrize, Lemkin sacrificed his entire life to make a real change in the world: the creation of the term“genocide” and making it a crime under international law. How long was his struggle to establishwhat we now take as obvious, what we now take for granted?This paper offers his short biography, showing his long road from realizing that the killing oneperson was considered a murder but that under international law in 1930s the killing a million wasnot. Through coining the term “genocide” in 1944, he helped make genocide a criminal charge atthe Nuremburg war crimes trials of Nazi leaders in late 1945, although there the crime of genocidedid not cover killing whole tribes when committed on inhabitants of the same country nor when notduring war. He next lobbied the new United Nations to adopt a resolution that genocide is a crimeunder international law, which it adopted on 11 December, 1946. Although not a U.N. delegate – hewas “Totally Unofficial,” the title of his autobiography – Lemkin then led the U.N. in creating theConvention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted 9 December, 1948.Until his death in 1958, Lemkin lobbied tirelessly to get other U.N. states to ratify the Convention.His legacy is that, as of 2015, 147 U.N. states have done so, 46 still on hold. His tomb inscriptionreads simply, “Dr. Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), Father of the Genocide Convention”. Without himthe world as we know it, would not be possible.


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