Child Witnesses and the International Criminal Justice System: Does the International Criminal Court Protect the Most Vulnerable?

While warfare has always caused human suffering, modern armedconflicts have been synonymous for the deliberate and systematicattacks on non-combatants, many of whom are children. As theyoften possess the best and sometimes only evidence of a particularcrime, it is likely that children will be asked to testify beforethe International Criminal Court. Given that they are the mostvulnerable of all witnesses, the Rome Statute contains variousprovisions designed to protect the interests of children. Whilethe Court's witness protection regime will help reduce the stressand trauma associated with giving evidence, various improvementscould be made to ensure that children are provided with thenecessary protection that their susceptible status requires.     

The Pinochet Case: International Criminal Justice in the Gothic Style?

Book reviewed in this article:
Woodhouse, Diana (ed), The Pinochet Case: A Legal and Constitutional Analysis     

The Caribbean Court of Justice: a learning experience for the International Criminal Court?

This article starts by examining the role of Small States in the development of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It then surveys the functioning and administration of the ICC before proceeding to draw on key lessons for this Court, including on the election of judges and financing, from the Caribbean Court of Justice.     

New Paths in International Criminal Justice?: The Internal Rules of the Cambodian Extraordinary Chambers

The Internal Rules of the Cambodian Extraordinary Chambers adoptedin June 2007 provide some insight into how a non-adversarialsystem might work in the context of a hybrid tribunal with jurisdictionover both domestic and international crimes. This approach presentsvarious novelties, especially with respect to the pre-trialand trial stages of the proceedings, and provides an exampleof integration into a domestic non-adversarial system of principlesderived from international criminal procedure.     

Expanding the Boundaries of Criminal Justice: Emphasizing the “S” in the Criminal Justice Sciences through Interdisciplinary Efforts

At its very core, the phrase “criminal justice sciences” points to the interdisciplinary nature of our field. However, efforts to promote and support interdisciplinary teaching and research face significant barriers. In this paper, I address how interdisciplinarity is conceptualized, the history of criminal justice as an interdisciplinary field, why we should promote interdisicplinarity, barriers we confront in interdisciplinary efforts, the degree to which ACJS members engage in interdisciplinary practices, factors related to interdisciplinarity, and opportunities for increased interdisciplinary research in criminal justice. To grow as an academic field, I conclude that we must look to other disciplines such as biology, computer science, policy, and women’s studies as we expand our disciplinary boundaries.     

Who is the Author of Halakhah?

The Jewish Law (Halakahh) is probably the older legal system working in our time. It is established on a hierarchy of different texts. The oldest and more authoritative is the Torah (the five books of Moshe), then come the Mishnah, the Talmud, the compilation as Maimonide’s Mishne Torah and Caro’s Shulchan Arukh, then the responsa of the rabbis. While the authorship of the later texts is more or less clear, the one of the Torah is highly problematic, also in the self-understanding of Jewish hermeneutics. This question is discussed in the present paper not from a philological-historical point of view, but from a semiotic one, trying to understand what devices and regimes of enunciation are enacted by the text in order to establish its semiotic-juridical effects. A special double enunciation frame is proposed as the mark of the legislative power in the text, in correlation with another textual device, a sort of divine “signature”. The further evolution of the authorship of the Jewish Law is discussed in its relation with the question of the autonomy in the interpretation of the sacred text.     

What is the Criminal Law for?

The traditional distinction between retributive and distributive justice misconstrues the place of the criminal law in modern regulatory states. In the context of the regulatory state, the criminal law is a coercive rule-enforcing institution – regardless of whether it also serves the ends of retributive justice. As a rule-enforcing institution, the criminal law is deeply implicated in stabilizing the institutions and legal rules by means of which a state creates and allocates social advantage. As a coercive institution, the criminal law requires justification as an instance of legitimate state authority. The operation of criminal justice institutions should therefore not be evaluated by reference to a distinct set of criteria, but should be evaluated by the same criteria that apply to coercive public institutions generally.     

The Compulsory Jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice: How Compulsory Is It?

The "compulsory jurisdiction" of the International Court ofJustice is not truly compulsory. The Court's jurisdiction isbased on the consent of the parties. States have the optionto accept or not to accept the Court's jurisdiction and cando so under terms and conditions they determine themselves.However, once a State has granted its consent, and when a disputethat falls within the scope of that consent is submitted tothe Court, the State must subject itself to the Court's jurisdiction.It is that legal obligation that is at the root of the term"compulsory".     

Who is steering the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice? The influence of Member State submissions on copyright law

The juridification of the European policy process is increasingly fragile, and little understood. This study develops a novel methodology to investigate the influence of Member States on the rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The focus is on the domain of copyright law which has seen a dramatic escalation of preliminary references to the Court, indicating a normative void. Examining 170 documents relating to 42 cases registered between 1998 and 2015, we measure empirically the impact of submissions by Member States and the European Commission on the interpretation of copyright concepts. We show that France is the most influential country by some distance, both in terms of the number of interventions (an ‘investment’ in policy) and in terms of persuasive power (arguments adopted by the Court). The evidence also suggests that the departure of the UK from EU litigation will disturb the delicate balance of CJEU jurisprudence.     

The International Criminal Court and Mali: Towards More Transparency in International Criminal Law Investigations?

The author takes a closer look at the Situation in Mali and the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP)’s initiation of full investigations on the basis of article 53(1) ICC Statute. In accordance with OTP Regulation 29(1), the OTP produces so-called ‘article 53’ reports that analyze the legal position in conflict situations that are under pre-investigation against the background of the following legal criteria: jurisdiction; admissibility; and the interest of justice. These reports give an analytical basis for the Chief Prosecutor to render a positive or negative decision on whether a certain conflict reaches the level of formal criminal investigations. In Mali, the Chief Prosecutor took the fast lane, passing by several other situations that have been under pre-investigation for a longer period of time. To a certain extent, as will be outlined in this contribution, this can be explained by the self-referral mechanism and certain particularities in Mali. However, some selective choices remain the OTP’s mystery, covert due to the nebulosity of ‘gravity’.