Shutting Down the United Nations War Crimes Commission

This article presents the struggle between factions in the executive branch of the US government over post-war relations with Eurasia in general and Germany in particular. It argues that the legal and moral divide between the groups concerned interpretation of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the limits of national sovereignty. It discusses the discontent of members of the UNWCC over US and UK efforts to close the Commission and how the United Nations dealt with the remaining UNWCC cases and records.     

The Legal Response of the League of Nations to Terrorism

Terrorism was first confronted as a discrete subject matterof international law by the international community in the mid-1930s,following the assassination of a Yugoslavian king and a Frenchforeign minister by ethnic separatists. The League's attemptto generically define terrorism in an international treaty prefiguredmany of the legal, political, ideological and rhetorical disputeswhich plagued the international community's attempts to defineterrorism in the 50 years after the Second World War. Althoughthe treaty never entered into force following the dissolutionof the League itself, the League's core definition has beenhighly resilient and has influenced subsequent legal effortsto define terrorism. While the League's 1937 Convention forthe Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism is often referredto obliquely in international legal discussions of terrorism,the drafting of the Convention has seldom been intensively analysed.By closely examining its drafting, this article elucidates howthe drafters of the Convention agreed on a definition of terrorism,and why they rejected alternative definitions. In doing so,it hopes to refresh and enliven current international debatesabout definition in the wake of the United Nation's 60th anniversaryyear, which saw renewed emphasis placed on the quest for definition.     

联合国反恐全面公约中的武装部队问题

如何规范一国武装部队的行为是制定联合国反恐全面公约的最大难题之一。武装部队在武装冲突及执行公务中的活动，应否受该公约的管辖？各国在此问题上难以达成共识。分歧的主要原因在于各国在国家恐怖主义的概念以及全面公约与国际人道法的关系问题上看法不一。为使全面公约尽早得以通过，可以明确规定国家武装部队在武装冲突及执行公务中的活动以及民族解放部队的活动均免受全面公约的管辖。因为即使不适用全面公约来约束武装部队的行为，国际人道法和国际刑法等其他相关国际法规则也可对此种行为进行管制。     

The War Against Terrorism and the Rule of Law

The War Against Terrorism has put into issue two tenets of theAmerican constitutional tradition. The first denies the governmentthe power to imprison anyone unless that person is charged witha crime and swiftly brought to trial. The other requires thegovernment to abide by the Constitution’s restrictionson its power no matter where or against whom it acts. This article,based on the 2005 H.L.A. Hart lecture, examines the SupremeCourt’s first encounter with the Administration’sconduct of the War Against Terrorism and explains how the SupremeCourt’s rulings badly compromised these foundational principles.     

《联合国国家及其财产管辖豁免公约》--一个并不完美的最好结果

2004年12月2日,第59届联合国大会以不投票的方式正式通过了<联合国国家及其财产管辖豁免公约>(以下简称<公约>),这是国际社会一个期待已久的成果.从内容上来看,<公约>并不是一个十分令人满意的完美文本,<公约>的许多规定和条款都是各种复杂问题及冲突利益之间小心平衡和艰难谈判和妥协的产物,但这从另一个角度而言,它似乎又是一个目前能为各方所广泛接受的最好结果.<公约>通过后,国际社会普遍给予了肯定的评价.本文拟就<公约>中几个主要方面的内容与问题作一扼要评述,以期我国有关部门在今后制定相关国内立法以及批准和履行<公约>时予以注意.     

The Relevance of the United Nations War Crimes Commission to the Prosecution of Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes Today

This article discusses aspects of the origin and development of jurisprudence relating to the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the context of international criminal law. It examines a selection of archival material from the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) and other bodies connected to it, noting that the UNWCC was the first multinational criminal law organization to explicitly endorse SGBV crimes as international crimes. UNWCC-supported trials in both Europe and Asia suggest that rape committed in the context of armed conflict or situations of mass violence was punishable as a serious crime nearly 70 years ago. Moreover, many of the theories of liability used by contemporary tribunals today were used in the UNWCC-supported cases. The authors maintain that the UNWCC archives are not only valuable for tribunals prosecuting conflict-related SGBV cases today, but the jurisprudence emerging from UNWCC-supported cases may also be quite relevant to contemporary policy debates.     

The War on Terrorism: When the Exception Becomes the Rule

This article argues that the semiotics of the war on terrorism points at a significant shift in United States' discourses on security. This shift can best be described as a move from defence to prevention or from danger to risk. Whereas the notion of defence is closely connected to the state of war, this article claims that the war on terrorism instead institutionalises a permanent state of exception. Building upon Agamben's notion that the state of exception is the non-localisable foundation of a political order, this article makes two claims. First, it argues that semiotic shifts in United States' security politics point at a general trend that, to some extent, structures international American interventions. In a sense, the semiotic shifts in American security discourse declare the United States as the sovereign of the global order: they allow the United States to exempt itself from the (international) framework of law, while demanding compliance by others. Second, it claims that this production of American sovereignty is paralleled by reducing the life of (some) individuals to the bare life of homo sacer(life that can be killed without punishment). In the war on terrorism, the production of bare life is mainly brought about by bureaucratic techniques of risk management and surveillance, which reduce human life to biographic risk profiles.     

《联合国国家及其财产管辖豁免公约》评析

第59届联合国大会通过的《联合国国家及其财产管辖豁免公约》肯定了国家豁免是一项国际法原则,对限制豁免进行了认定。当今的国际社会,限制豁免更易被接受。限制豁免是国际法规范的发展趋势。我国应制定《国家豁免法》,明确规定限制豁免的做法。     

冷战后联合国维和行动发展评析

联合国维和行动是联合国维护世界和平与安全的重要手段.在美苏对峙的冷战时期,联合国维和行动的发展受到极大的抑制.冷战结束后,新的国际政治与安全形势为联合国维和行动的开展提供了前提条件和机遇,国际社会对维和行动提出了新的要求,因此联合国维和行动得到了迅速发展并表现出许多新的特点和发展趋势.但是,由于国际环境的变化和日趋复杂,冷战后的联合国维和行动也面临着一些问题与挑战,这些问题和挑战对联合国维和行动的未来发展将产生重要影响.     

《联合国国家及其财产管辖豁免公约》评介

<联合国国家及其财产管辖豁免公约>是第一个全面规范国家及其财产管辖豁免问题的普遍性国际公约,也是第一个确认国家及其财产限制豁免的普遍性国际公约.该<公约>的通过和开放签署,对国际法的发展具有重要的理论和现实意义.