Reflections on International Judges and Their Decision-making: A Review Essay on Daniel Terris et al. (eds), The International Judge

In reviewing this valuable book, some reflections were givenconcerning nominations of candidates for judicial posts, aswell as on moral integrity of particular judges in the proceedingsbefore the International Court of Justice on South West Africa(Namibia) between 1950 and 1971. Paradoxically, the controversialJudgment of 1966 had some salutary effects on further developmentof rules of general international law.     

National Security vs Criminal law. Perspectives,Doubts and Concerns on the Criminalisation of Organised Crime in England and Wales

This paper will interpret and critically analyse the new offence for organised crime in England and Wales (Section 45 of the Serious Crime Act 2015) from a criminological perspective in light of evidence found in research in the country. It will argue that changes in the law relate to changes in political narratives rather than to variations in the criminal panorama of organised crime. It will discuss these changes within three perspectives, which address various levels of concern: a narrative perspective, which reflects on the overlapping of meanings in the use of the words ‘organised crime’; an evolution perspective, which reflects on the origins of the new participation offences with reference to both national and international pressures; a management perspective, which reflects on some of the immediate effects of the new offences of organised crime on the criminal justice system. This paper will conclude that political narratives have indeed influenced criminal policy, while there is no significant change in the phenomenon of organised crime to justify such narratives.     

Women,Work, and Crime: An International Test of the Emancipation Hypothesis

This study analyzes Interpol statistics on female crime for the 1963–1970 period for a sample of Western nations with the purpose of testing two popular explanations of female criminality. Six measures of female economic participation in society were correlated with female proportional involvement in overall crime rates, theft, fraud, murder, and robbery/burglary.

It was found that women's contribution to the overall arrest rate is neither directly proportional to their employment in the commercial work force, nor to the degree in which their jobs are comparable to those of males. The analysis of the crimes of theft and fraud provided support for the “opportunity” version of emancipation theory. Adler's “aggressive” variant of the emancipation hypothesis was only partly borne out by the data for murder and not supported for robbery and burglary.     

Constructing International Crime: Lawyers,States, and the Origin of International Criminal Prosecution in the Interwar Period

This article explains the development of international crime as a legal category. I argue that states’ pursuit of political rights claims empowers international lawyers to develop new legal categories to grant states new tools to pursue their interests. At the same time, lawyers have a stake in defending the autonomy of law from politics, thus pushing for the development of legal norms and institutions that go beyond the original state intent. States’ turn to law thus begets more law, expanding the legal and institutional tools to solve international problems while simultaneously enforcing a commitment to principles of legality. To demonstrate the plausibility of the theory, the article studies the construction of the concept of an international crime in the interwar period (1919–1939). In response to the Allies’ attempt to prosecute the German Emperor, international lawyers sought the codification of international criminal law and drafted enforcement mechanisms. The interwar legal debate not only introduced international crime into the legal and political vocabulary, it also legitimized a new set of institutional responses to violations of international law, namely, international criminal prosecution.     

Review of S. B. Chetverikov,Who Makes U.S. Policy and How

This book is devoted to current problems in the working of the organs of government and administration of the United States, the functioning of the mechanism for the development, adoption, and implementation of its political decisions, and the interrelation and coordination of the actions of various links in its governmental machinery. It is a thorough investigation of questions of public law in the United States. The author makes clear the distinguishing features of the development of the governmental mechanism in the USA during the present period, the internal processes occurring in the political system of the imperialist state, and the contradictions inherent in it. Chetverikov directs the reader's attention to a number of issues in the present development of the system of governmental administration in the USA that have been inadequately treated in the Soviet legal literature. They include the rising political role of the bureaucracy and the tendency for it to elude control by the higher authorities, including the president; the unique character of the present stage of the fusion of the government machinery and the monopolies; the formation of a "triple alliance" made up of permanent bureaucracy, monopolist "interest groups" (consisting of lobbying organizations exercising "influence" favorable to the monopolies on government bodies), and the working machinery of Congress; the inflation of the governmental machinery and its "monopolist degeneration."