scholarly journals The Combatant's Stance: Autonomous Weapons on the Battlefield

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens David Ohlin
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
International Crime ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Military Commander ◽  
Autonomous Weapons

Do Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) qualify as moral or rational agents? This paper argues that combatants on the battlefield are required by the demands of behavior interpretation to approach a sophisticated AWS with the “Combatant’s Stance” — the ascription of mental states required to understand the system’s strategic behavior on the battlefield. However, the fact that an AWS must be engaged with the combatant’s stance does not entail that other persons are relieved of criminal or moral responsibility for war crimes committed by autonomous weapons. This article argues that military commanders can and should be held responsible for perpetrating war crimes through an AWS regardless of the moral status of the AWS as a culpable or non-culpable agent. In other words, a military commander can be liable for the acts of the machine independent of what conclusions we draw from the fact that combatants — even artificial ones — must approach each other with the combatant’s stance.The basic framework for this liability was established at Nuremberg and subsequent tribunals — both of which focused on how a criminal defendant can be responsible for allowing a metaphorical “machine” — such as a concentration camp — to commit an international crime. The novelty in this technological development is that the law must shift from dealing with the metaphor of the “cog in the machine” to a literal machine. Nonetheless, this article also concludes that there is one area where international criminal law is ill suited to dealing with a military commander’s responsibility for unleashing an AWS that commits a war crime. Many of these cases will be based on the commander’s recklessness and unfortunately international criminal law has struggled to develop a coherent theoretical and practical program for prosecuting crimes of recklessness.Published: Jens David Ohlin, "The Combatant's Stance: Autonomous Weapons on the Battlefield," 92 International Law Studies (2016)

Eco-Struggles

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Gillett
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Jus Post Bellum

This chapter examines the provisions of international criminal law applicable to serious environmental harm, particularly during non-international armed conflicts ('NIAC'). After describing incidents of serious environmental harm arising in armed conflicts, the analysis surveys the provisions of international criminal law applicable to environmental harm during NIACs, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression. It then examines the basis for extending to NIACs the protection against military attacks causing excessive environmental harm (set out in Art. 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute), which is currently only applicable in IACs. The examination of this possible amendment of the Rome Statute covers a broad range of instruments and laws forming part of international and national legal codes, all addressing grave environmental harm. Finally, the analysis turns to accountability for environmental harm as a facet of jus post bellum, emphasizing the interconnected nature of environmental harm and cycles of violence and atrocities.

The “Kouwenhoven” Case

2019 ◽  
Vol 181 ◽  
pp. 568-704
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Arms Embargo ◽  
Witness Statements

Economics, trade and finance — Economic sanctions — Liberia — UN Security Council Resolutions 1343 (2001) and 1408 (2002) — Implementation of arms embargo under Dutch law — Whether sanctions regime violatedInternational criminal law — Difference between perpetrator and accomplice liability — Complicity in war crimes — Requirement that defendant promoted or facilitated the commission of war crimes — Conditional intent — Whether defendant consciously accepted the probability that war crimes would be committed in connection with his material support — Risk of doing business with a government engaged in international criminal activityInternational criminal law — Evidence — Admissibility and weight of witness statements — Factors relevant to assessing witness statements obtained in post-conflict environment — Coercion of witnesses — Whether inconsistencies in witness statements requiring acquittalInternational criminal law — Circumstances excusing unlawful conduct — National emergency — Whether violations of arms embargo and laws and customs of war justified by right to self-defence under international lawJurisdiction — Universal jurisdiction — War crimes — Prosecution of a Dutch national for offences committed abroad — Whether conduct of investigation by Dutch authorities making prosecution inadmissible — Whether amnesty scheme in Liberia barrier to prosecution — No violation of fair trial rightsWar and armed conflict — Existence of armed conflict — Whether armed conflict international or internal — Limited gap between norms applicable to international versus non-international armed conflict — Whether violations of laws and customs of war giving rise to individual criminal liability under Dutch law — The law of the Netherlands

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW AND AR (AZERBAIJAN REPUBLIC) LEGISLATION GENOCIDE CRIME AND ITS COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH OTHER INTERNATIONAL CRIMES

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (04) ◽  
pp. 48-52
Author(s):  
Erkin Humbat Musayev Humbat Musayev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
International Law ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Transnational Crime ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Crimes

Key words: international law, international criminal law, genocide, war crimes, transnational crime

scholarly journals Nullum Crimen and International Criminal Law: The Relevance of the Foreseeability Test

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-531
Author(s):  
Harmen van der Wilt
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
European Court ◽  
Starting Point

This article traces the development of the foreseeability test in the context of the nullum crimen principle. While the European Court of Human Rights has introduced the ‘accessibility and foreseeability’ criteria long ago in the Sunday Times case, the Court has only recently started to apply this standard with respect to international crimes. In the Kononov case, judges of the European Court of Human Rights exhibited strongly divergent opinions on the question whether the punishment of alleged war crimes that had been committed in 1944 violated the nullum crimen principle. According to this author, the dissension of the judges demonstrates the lack of objective foreseeability, which should have served as a starting point for the assessment of the subjective foreseeability and a – potentially exculpating – mistake of law of the perpetrator. The Court should therefore have concluded that the nullum crimen principle had been violated.

scholarly journals TINDAK PIDANA TERORISME DARI PERSPEKTIF HUKUM PIDANA INTERNASIONAL

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahma Yanti
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Crime ◽  
Transnational Crime ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Sensitive Issue ◽  
International Conventions

Terrorism is one of transnational crime base on international conventions. One of national crime which consists of transnational aspects. Transnational crime convention only manage about how to run cooperation to eliminate national crime which across country borders. Terrorism hasn’t consider as International crime because there’s no unification about its definition. Terrorism still consider as a sensitive issue in each country related with rass, etnis, culture, religion, and geographical aspects. Terrorism law enforcement proses is each country positive law jurisdiction and not as International Criminal Court jurisdiction based on Rome Statuta.Keywords: Crime, Terrorism, International Criminal Law

To Withdraw or Not to Withdraw: A Structural Analysis of the Scope and Limits of Voluntary Withdrawal of Criminal Attempt in the Rome Statute

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1167-1192
Author(s):  
Igor Vuletić
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Crime ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Voluntary Withdrawal ◽  
Subjective Conception

Abstract Voluntary withdrawal of criminal attempt is one of the fundamental institutes of the general part of criminal law, originally codified in international criminal law in the Rome Statute. Since the Statute attributed significant legal effects to withdrawal, which excludes the liability for criminal attempt, it is important to establish a clear understanding on its scope and limitations. This article analyses controversial issues related to the legal nature of withdrawal as grounds for exclusion of criminal liability, withdrawal of individual offenders and accomplices, and provides interpretations on potential solutions for these issues. The analysis is based on the subjective conception of withdrawal, under which its essence lays in the rejection of the initial criminal intent, while taking into consideration withdrawal in the context of international crime. Based on the analysis, an original three-level test for the determination of withdrawal in the future practice of the International Criminal Court, (icc) is proposed.

Fighting the Scourge of International Crime

2020 ◽  
pp. 241-258
Author(s):  
David Petruccelli
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Crime ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
International Crimes

This chapter examines initiatives to organize the global fight against international crime, which emerged in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1920s and which by the 1930s posed an alternative to the imperial and liberal internationalist programmes pursued by many Western Europeans and Americans. Police, especially from Austria, sought to internationalize policing through the International Criminal Police Commission (today Interpol). At the same time, jurists from the region sought to unify norms for fighting international crimes as a first step towards a broader project of founding a body of international criminal law. Both programmes responded to the particular social and demographic problems engulfing the region after the collapse of Europe’s great land empires. By the 1930s, these post-imperial and often illiberal programmes increasingly set the agenda at the League of Nations on a range of international offences, notably the drug trade and sex trafficking.

Crimes against Humanity

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth van Schaack
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Crime ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Civilian Population

Crimes against humanity have both a colloquial and a legal existence. In daily parlance, the term is employed to condemn any number of atrocities that violate international human rights. As a legal construct, crimes against humanity encompass a constellation of acts made criminal under international law when they are committed within the context of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population. In the domain of international criminal law, crimes against humanity are an increasingly useful component of any international prosecutor’s toolbox, because they can be charged in connection with acts of violence that do not implicate other international criminal prohibitions, such as the prohibitions against war crimes (which require a nexus to an armed conflict) and genocide (which protects only certain human groups and requires proof of a specific intent to destroy such a group). Although the concept of crimes against humanity has deep roots, crimes against humanity were first adjudicated—albeit with some controversy—in the criminal proceedings following the World War II period. The central challenge to defining crimes against humanity under international criminal law since then has been to come up with a formulation of the offense that reconciles the principle of sovereignty—which envisions an exclusive territorial domain in which states are free from outside scrutiny—with the idea that international law can, and indeed should, regulate certain acts committed entirely within the borders of a single state. Because many enumerated crimes against humanity are also crimes under domestic law (e.g., murder, assault, and rape), it was necessary to define crimes against humanity in a way that did not elevate every domestic crime to the status of an international crime, subject to international jurisdiction. Over the years, legal drafters have experimented with various elements in an effort to arrive at a workable penal definition. The definitional confusion plaguing the crime over its life span generated a considerable amount of legal scholarship. It was not until the UN Security Council promulgated the statutes of the two ad hoc international criminal tribunals—the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda—that a modern definition of the crime emerged. These definitions were further refined by the case law of the two tribunals and their progeny, such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone. All these doctrinal developments were codified, with some additional modifications, in a consensus definition in Article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It is now clear that the offense constitutes three essential elements: (1) the existence of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population and (2) the intentional commission of an enumerated act (such as an act of murder or torture) (3) by an individual with knowledge that his or her act would contribute to the larger attack. A renewed effort is now afoot to promulgate a multilateral treaty devoted to crimes against humanity based on the ICC definition and these central elements. Through this dynamic process of codification and interpretation, many—but not all—definitional issues left open in the postwar period have finally been resolved. Although their origins were somewhat shaky, crimes against humanity now have a firm place in the canon of international criminal law.

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