Justice delayed? Internationalised criminal tribunals and peace-building in Lebanon,Bosnia and Cambodia

In countries emerging from violent conflict and/or mass atrocity, there is an urgent need to promote stability and often also widespread demand for accountability for abuses which have taken place. Debate has raged among scholars and practitioners about whether justice should be sacrificed or delayed for the sake of peace, or should be promoted even if it is in the short term destabilising. In many countries emerging from conflict processes of accountability, or transitional justice processes, operate almost simultaneously alongside processes of peace-building such as disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of ex-combatants, reform of the security sector and rule of law promotion, in the immediate aftermath of conflict. These can include domestic processes of truth-telling, prosecution, reparation and amnesty, or internationally promoted processes such as international criminal tribunals. They can also include internationalised criminal tribunals, which have mixed national–international staff. While scholarship has increasingly focused on the engagement between transitional justice and peace-building processes in the relatively near term, far less has examined the role of processes of accountability that follow conflict termination by a significant period of time, justice delayed. Drawing on recent fieldwork, the authors examine three internationalised criminal tribunals developed some 15 years after the termination of conflict in countries that experienced three very different types of conflict, conflict resolution and peace-building or reconstruction in Bosnia, Lebanon and Cambodia. They find that despite claims made by advocates for such institutions, such tribunals may only have limited impact on longer term peace-building and that the effects of flawed peace-building activities affect the operating environment of the tribunals.     

Ethics and Intelligence after September 2001

Anthony Glees, The Secrets of the Service: British Intelligence and Communist Subversion 1939–51 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987). Pp.447; £18.

Robert A. Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). Pp.378; $32.50 and $14.50.

Peter Taylor, Stalker: the Search for the Truth (London: Faber and Faber, 1987). Pp.231, £9.95, paperback £4.95.

Frank Doherty, The Stalker Affair: Including an Account of British Secret Service Operations in Ireland (Cork and Dublin: Mercier Press, 1986). Pp.90, IR£3.95.

K.G. Robertson (ed.), Intelligence and National Security (London: Macmillan, 1987). Pp.281.

William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History. U.S. Global Interventions Since World War 2 (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1986). Pp.428. $19.95.

Joan Miller, One Girl's War: Personal Exploits in MIS's Most Secret Station (Dublin: Brandon Book Publishers, 1986). Pp.155. £5.95.     

Book reviews

An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Legal Reasoning Anne Von Der Leith Gardner MIT Press 1987. £20.25

Design—The Modern Law and Practice Ian Morris and Barry Quest Butterworths. 1987. £45

Computers and the Law Richard Mawry and Keith Salmon BSP Professional Books,(Oxford, London, Edinburgh) 1988, £19.95

Television by Satellite—Legal Aspects Stephen de B. Bate (ed.) ESC Publishing Limited. 1987. £32.75.

Computer Software: Legal Protection in the United Kingdom Henry Carr E.S.C. Publishing Ltd 1987, £32.50.

Patents in Chemistry and Biotechnology Philip W Grubb Clarendon Press 1987. £12.50.

The International Handbook on Computer Crime Computer‐related Economic Crime and the Infringements of Privacy Ulrich Sieber John Wiley & Sons 1987. £24.95.

Computer Law: Theory and Practice Naomi Assia Advocate     

Laryngeal basement membrane thickening is not a reliable postmortem marker for SIDS: results from the Chicago Infant Mortality Study.

It has been suggested that laryngeal basement membrane (LBM) thickening is a pathognomonic postmortem marker for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and is not seen in other causes of explained sudden infant death. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated longitudinal sections of the right hemilarynx taken through the midpoint of the true vocal cord from 129 SIDS cases and 77 postneonatal sudden infant death controls. Using a five-point semi-quantitative scale, maximum LBM thickness (LBMT) for SIDS cases and controls was not statistically different (mean, 2.39 + 0.69 and 2.40 + 0.77, respectively). Likewise, scores based on the average thickness along the entire basement membrane (i.e., "average" score), were not found to be different between SIDS cases and controls. Average and maximum LBMT increased with age in both SIDS cases and controls and were not different between SIDS cases and controls within each age interval. Similar trends in the distribution of maximum and average LBMTs were found between black and Hispanic SIDS and controls; the number of white/non-Hispanic infants was too low for meaningful comparisons. Maximum and average LBMTs were not different in SIDS cases and controls exposed to environmental tobacco compared with unexposed infants. The LBMTs also increased significantly with body weight and length in both SIDS cases and controls. Finally, there were no differences in LBMT in infants intubated prior to death compared with those who were not intubated. From these data, we conclude that LBMT is not pathognomonic of SIDS, is present or absent with equal frequency in SIDS and controls, increases with postnatal age, and does not correlate with passive smoke exposure. Therefore, LBMT should not be used to diagnose SIDS.     

TURBULENT TRANSITION AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANCE: RELATING POLICY OUTCOMES TO STRATEGIC ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITIES

Much of the literature on public policy with its institutional and legislative emphases conveys the view that organizational effectiveness is primarily dependent on actors external to the agency. That is, laws prescribe programs and operating procedures; overlapping jurisdictions restrict innovative behavior; and the politics o f fund budgeting encourage complacency and incrementalism. This article proposes an alternative set of propositions explaining policy outcomes and agency performance as a function of internal administrative considerations. The propositions are empirically evaluated using data from Pacific Coast port authorities during the "container revolution" and environmental movement. The results suggest that variance in strategic performance can be attributed to (1) perceptions about intergovernmental relations and performance gap, (2) an agency micro-structure for strategic planning and policy analysis, and (3) a set of intervening administrative variables.     

Who needs Daddy Warbucks: The Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program should apply to children of those who surrender their parental rights

Families who find themselves in the middle of child protective proceedings have three possible outcomes: (1) the family can reunify; (2) parents voluntarily surrender their parental rights; or (3) the parents have their rights terminated. While it seems we should support children in the second and third scenarios equally, having funding sources such as the Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program (KinGAP) only available to children of parents whose rights are terminated, does the opposite. This Note proposes amending the eligibility requirements of KinGAP to include children of parents who surrender their parental rights which would encourage positive safe placements for children.