Terrorism and piracy: A legal view

Abstract

Terrorist attacks on persons or property on the high seas or in the newly designated “exclusive economic zones” bear analogy closer to the traditional international law of “piracy” than most observers suspect. In traditional practice “private ends” in the usual sense was not an essential element of the offense; the label and its legal results were attached to unrecognized belligerents too. The latest codifications of the international law relating to piracy, principally those deriving from the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas, are patently defective. A new formulation is proposed, with a commentary that, among other things, points out how international criminal law and universal jurisdiction can be coordinated with the generally accepted international law of armed conflict to clarify what is currently a chaotic legal situation.     

A Neo‐Institutional Account of Prison Diffusion

Interest in legal innovations, particularly in the criminal law realm, often centers on an innovation's emergence, but not its subsequent diffusion. Typifying this trend, existing accounts of the prison's historical roots persuasively explain the prison's “birth” in Jacksonian‐Era northern coastal cities, but not its subsequent rapid, widespread, and homogenous diffusion across a culturally, politically, and economically diverse terrain. Instead, this study offers a neo‐institutional account of the prison's diffusion, emphasizing the importance of national, field‐level pressures rather than local, contextual factors. This study distinguishes between the prison's innovation and early adoption, which can be explained by the need to replace earlier proto‐prisons, and its subsequent adoption, particularly in the South and frontier states, which was driven by the desire to conform to increasingly widespread practices. This study further attributes the isomorphic nature of the diffusion to institutional pressures, including uncertainty surrounding the new technology, pseudoprofessional penal reformers and their claims about competing models of confinement, and contingent historical factors that reinforced these institutional pressures. This study illustrates the importance of distinguishing between the motivations that initiate criminal law innovations and those that advance their diffusion.     

CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPMENT IN BURUNDI： A CASE STUDY OF PROTECTION OF REFUGEES AND IDPS IN POST-CONFLICT RECONCILIATION AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE

Violations of human rights and genocide in Burundi are among the most contentious issues which continue to attract the attention of academic discourse. This paper is concerned with the question of human rights violations in Burundi from a historical and comparative perspective. It seeks to trace the root causes of Burundi＇s sullied human rights record over 52 years since independence from Belgium in 1962, the role of the military in human rights violations, including mass killings of civilians and extra-judicial executions of political opponents and the fact that the post- conflict constitutional architecture has not succeeded in establishing accountability and responsibility for these violations; in providing truth, justice and reparations to the victims and in putting an end to the culture of impunity which seems to be entrenched in Burundian society. Moreover, by analyzing critically the results from interviewing 113 Burundians and 16 non-Burundians, this paper argues that there will be no political stability enduring peace without addressing these issues in a comprehensive manner.     

A Checkpoint Effect? Evidence from a Natural Experiment on Travel Restrictions in the West Bank

Does nonviolent repression prompt subject groups to obey or rebel? By what mechanism does it do so? To address these questions, we exploit a natural experiment based on a 2009 policy toward the “easement” of checkpoints—nonviolent impediments to movement—in the West Bank. We sample populations across 17 villages (n = 599), beside one checkpoint slated for easement (treatment) and one that will undergo no change (control), before and after the intervention. We then pursue difference‐in‐difference estimation. This design is experimental, as easement was orthogonal to Palestinian attitudes; for robustness, we test our findings against an independent panel (n = 1,200). We find that easement makes subject populations less likely to support violence; we suggest humiliation as the mechanism bridging nonviolent repression with militancy. This warrants rethinking Israeli security policy, as short‐term concerns over Palestinian mobility may be compromising Israel's long‐term interests. By extension, checkpoint easement may positively affect peace negotiations.     

Psychotic Domestic Murder: Neuropsychological Differences Between Homicidal and Nonhomicidal Schizophrenic Men

There is substantial evidence that individuals with schizophrenia are at increased risk for violent criminal behavior and an even higher risk for committing murder, relative to the general population. Neuropsychological features of seven schizophrenic men who murdered family members were compared to neuropsychological features of seven schizophrenic men with no history of violence, criminal offenses or antisocial behavior. The two groups were matched for age, education, race, gender, handedness, and diagnosis, and had similar psychotic symptom profiles and substance abuse histories. The schizophrenic murderers demonstrated significantly worse neuropsychological impairment, involving executive dysfunction and memory dysfunction, relative to nonviolent schizophrenic men. Implications include: (1) specific neuropsychological deficits may increase the likelihood of some schizophrenic men to murder family members due to an impaired capacity to inhibit impulsive violent aggression; (2) neuropsychological status of schizophrenic defendants who commit domestic homicide should be considered by the trier-of-fact when they are tried for murder.