A Special Issue of the London Review of International Law Devoted to International Criminal Justice on/and Film @immi_tallgren

Volume 6, issue 1, March 2018 of the London Review of International Law is devoted to issues of international law and justice on film. 

The issue includes Ainley, Humphreys, and Tallgren, International Criminal Justice on/and film; Rush and Elander, Working Through the Cinematography of International Criminal Justice: Procedure of Law and Images of Atrocity; Weckel, Watching the Accused Watch the Nazi Crimes: Observers' Reports on the Atrocity Film Screenings in the Belsen, Nuremberg, and Eichmann Trials; McNamee and Andrews, "Judgment at Nuremberg:" Hollywood Takes the International Criminal Law Stand; and Rigney, "You Start To Feel Really Alone": Defence Lawyers and Narratives of International Criminal Law in Film.

Via @immi_tallgren.

Wilson @richardawilson7 on Propaganda and History in International Criminal Trials

Richard Ashby Wilson, University of Connecticut School of Law, is publishing Propaganda and History in International Criminal Trials in the Journal of International Criminal Justice (2016). Here is the abstract.

In the course of prosecuting crimes against humanity, international criminal tribunals from the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg to the International Criminal Court (ICC) have provided accounts of the origins and causes of mass atrocities. Their historical narratives exhibit a common feature that has not been remarked upon, and that is the central role they assign to political propaganda in explaining popular participation in mass crimes. Judges have invoked propaganda to answer one of the most vexing questions at international criminal tribunals: why neighbor turned against neighbor and committed extreme acts of collective violence in contexts characterized by long periods of co-existence. This article evaluates the evidence for claims regarding the role of propaganda and concludes that eyewitness evidence for the causal role of propaganda is often slender and unconvincing. Insiders and material perpetrators more often than not repudiate their original testimony amid allegations of intimidation and bribery. At times, judges have balked at expert evidence on propaganda and refused to recognize it as germane to a criminal trial. Given the relative paucity of evidence for a directly causal role, why has propaganda become one of the overarching narratives that international courts employ to explain atrocities during armed conflicts? How does the model of causation customarily used in criminal law shape the kind of histories that international courts write? In answering these questions, the article refers to the unique model of causation used in criminal law, the apolitical nature of propaganda as an historical explanation, and the moral expressivist function of criminal courts.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Gordon on the History of International Criminal Law and War Crimes at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

Gregory S. Gordon, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law, has published International Criminal Law's 'Oriental Pre-Birth': The 1894-1900 Trials of the Siamese, Ottomans and Chinese in 4 Historical Origins of International Criminal Law 119 (M. Bergsmo et. al., TOAEP, 2015). Here is the abstract.

Conventional wisdom often traces the origins of international criminal law (ICL) to the 1474 prosecution for atrocities in Alsace of Burgundian governor Peter von Hagenbach and then straight to the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials post-World War II. But this paper demonstrates that history has ignored a remarkable decade at the end of the nineteenth century when three international criminal proceedings with links to the Orient took place: (1) in 1894, a French-Siamese mixed court sat in judgment of Phra Yot, a Siamese governor charged with the death of a French military commander; (2) in 1898, an International Military Commission of four European powers prosecuted versions of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from Muslim-Christian inter-communal violence on the Ottoman-controlled island of Crete; and (3) in 1900, another international criminal tribunal, this one also consisting of four European powers, presided over the trial of participants in the Boxer Rebellion for proto-crimes against humanity. The paper describes the origins of these three "Oriental" tribunals, including an overview of the noble, and at turns, cynical rationales that inspired the Great Powers to turn to adjudication efforts and international processes. ICL scholarship has examined the trials separately but never together, within their broader historical context. Doing so reveals that they took place during an odd confluence of European colonialism's apogee and the international peace movement's founding. This fascinating period features the erosion of the Congress of Vienna framework, Industrial Revolution demand for overseas cheap labor, raw materials, and new markets, and nascent efforts at establishing transnational arbitral institutions. While Africa was carved up among the European powers at the 1884 Berlin Conference, there was no such orderly division of territory in the Orient. The paper posits that the featured trials are the product of peace movement arbitral impulses in coping with outbursts of violence and resulting tensions among the Europeans competing for imperial possessions in the context of that violence -- without a Berlin Conference-style regional master plan. The trials anticipated many important ICL developments, including proto-formulations of war crimes and crimes against humanity and the establishment of ad hoc and hybrid tribunals. But, sadly, they did not pave the way for Allied use of ICL to achieve justice in the imminent wake of World War I. At that point in history, the Europeans were ready to sit in judgment of their imperial subjects but not of themselves. Thus, these remarkable ICL efforts seem more a subliminal outgrowth of the era's Zeitgeist than a needed groundwork for post-Versailles justice. Still, when viewed holistically and contextually, these late-nineteenth century inquests supply an important missing link between the Hagenbach trial and the proper advent of ICL in the twentieth century.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

John Q. Barrett on the Opening of the Nuremberg Trials

John Q. Barrett, St. John's University School of Law; Robert H. Jackson Center, has published Opening the Nuremberg Trial: The Moment of November 20, 1945 as St. John's University Legal Studies Research Paper No. 15-0032. Here is the abstract.

On November 20, 1945, the International Military Tribunal (IMT), created by the victorious World War II Allied powers, began criminal trial proceedings in Nuremberg in the Allied-occupied former Germany. This first and only international Nuremberg trial involved twenty-one individual defendants and six organizations that had been leading parts of Nazi Germany’s government and war-waging. On November 20, 2015, the 70th anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg trial, the city of Nuremberg hosted in the trial site, Palace of Justice Courtroom 600, a discussion among three men who worked there during 1945-46. Dr. Yves Beigbeder served as an assistant to French judge Henri Donnedieu de Vabres. Father Moritz Fuchs was the bodyguard of United States Chief of Counsel Robert H. Jackson. Dr. George Sakheim was an interpreter and translator in the Interrogation Division, U.S. Office of Chief of Counsel. These introductory remarks preceded the panel discussion. I describe some of the dimensions, including military power, political decision making, legal concepts, personalities and logistics, that led the Allies to the Nuremberg courtroom in November 1945.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A Study of Radovan Karadzic and the Charges Against Him

New from Cambridge University Press:

Robert J. Donia, Radovan Karadžič: Architect of the Bosnian Genocide

Radovan Karadžić, leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalists during the Bosnian War (1992–1995), stands accused of genocide and other crimes of war before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. This book traces the origins of the extreme violence of the war to the utopian national aspirations of the Serb Democratic Party and Karadžić's personal transformation from an unremarkable family man to the powerful leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalists. Based on previously unused documents from the tribunal's archives and many hours of Karadžić's cross-examination at his trial, the author shows why and how the Bosnian Serb leader planned and directed the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War. This book provocatively argues that postcommunist democracy was a primary enabler of mass atrocities because it provided the means to mobilize large numbers of Bosnian Serbs for the campaign to eliminate non-Serbs from conquered land.

Published September 2014; $33 paperback.  Also available in hardcover; $90. Robert J. Donia is Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

The Origins of Nuremberg

Kirsten Sellars, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, has published Founding Nuremberg: Innovation and Orthodoxy at the 1945 London Conference in Historical Origins of International Criminal Law (M. Bergsmo, W. L. Cheah, and P. Yi, eds.; Torkel Opsahl Academic Publisher, 2014).
Here is the abstract.

No document better conveys the roughness and expediency of the negotiations leading up to the tribunal at Nuremberg than the transcript of the four-power London Conference, held from 26 June to 2 August 1945. Their success was by no means assured: the Americans repeatedly threatened to walk out, the British fretted over German counter-charges, the French objected to crimes against peace, and the Soviets refused anything other than ad hoc charges. This was history in the making, and its making was an unedifying business.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

A Female Prosecutor at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal

Shana Tabak, American University Washington College of Law, has published Grace Kanode Llewellyn: Local Portia at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in The George Washington University Law School International and Comparative Law Perspectives at p. 7 (2013). 

Believed to be the first woman ever to figure in the proceedings of an international military tribunal, Grace Kanode Llewellyn served as a Assistant Prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo (IMFTE) in 1945-46. This short historical piece explores what is known of Kanode's professional life and her contributions to the then-nascent field of international criminal law.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link. 

The Kaiser As a War Criminal

Kirsten Sellers, National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law, Centre for Asian Legal Studies, is publishing German Aggression and the Stillbirth of International Criminal Law at the Paris Peace Conference in The Crime of Aggression--A Commentary (Claus Kress and Stefan Barriga eds.; Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2015). Here is the abstract.

At the end of the First World War, David Lloyd George, campaigning on behalf of his coalition government, declared: ‘The Kaiser must be prosecuted. The war was a crime. Who doubts that?’ This was a radical departure from the traditional approach to war, containing within it two innovative ideas: that embarking upon an aggressive war was a crime, and that a head of state could be held personally responsible for it. This would soon become an important theme in discussions between the entente nations at the Paris Peace Conference about the viability of trying Wilhelm II for war-related crimes. Now, nearly a century later, with the idea of charging leaders for the ‘crime of aggression’ on the International Criminal Court’s agenda, the issues first raised by Lloyd George and others continue to resonate.

The full text is not available from SSRN.  

Interpreting Guantanamo

The New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement has published the proceedings of a fall play and panel discussion and spring symposium, all discussing the US government's policies at Guantanamo since 9/11. Michael Meltsner, one of the nation’s leading authorities on capital punishment, wrote the play, In Our Name, and Victoria Marsh, Company One Boston, directed it. The symposium proceedings include contributions by Victor Hansen, Joseph Hutson, Bradley Wendel and Elizabeth Wilson.  Here is a link to more information about the proceedings.

Call For Papers--Critical Approaches To International Criminal Law

Call for Papers – Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law

The first conference on Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law, organised by the University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice, will take place on Thursday 6^th December and Friday 7th December 2012.

The field of International Criminal Law (ICL) has recently experienced a significant surge in scholarship, in institutions, and in the public debate. The contemporary debate is predominantly focussed on ICL’s contribution to projects of justice, peace, legality, addressing impunity and accountability. While there are individual sites of critique, they are largely limited to effectiveness arguments: If the International Criminal Court is not functioning as well as it could be, then it must be made more effective; if peace is not yet achieved through tackling impunity, then there must be more accountability. This limited critique has fostered a seemingly self-congratulatory, uncritical, and over-confident area of international law which has marginalised deeper critical approaches.

What is missing from the mainstream debate are the possible complicities of ICL in injustice, conflict, exclusions, and biases. Arguably, the numerous conferences this year on the topic of the 10-year anniversary of the coming into force of the Rome Statute are largely a testament to this limited critique. In this conference, we hope to shift the debate towards such complicities and limitations in the contemporary understanding of ICL. We hope to question some of the assumptions which inform the field and which may cause injustice, conflict, exclusion and bias.

Tentative sites of critique, which are envisaged as central to an idea of Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law (CAICL), are:

1.              ICL and the political

2.              ICL and individualism

3.              ICL and neo-liberalism

4.              ICL and ideology

5.              ICL and gender

6.              ICL and afrocentricism

7.              ICL crowding out other disciplines

8.              ICL and the emergence of a judiocracy

The first day of the conference is open to all and will take place at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool. The second day will be a closed session including a writing workshop and an exchange of ideas on teaching CAICL; participation of this requires an invitation.

More information will be online shortly at: http://www.liv.ac.uk/law-and-social-justice/research/human_rights/index.htm

Please send abstracts of 500 words (max.) and a short bio (100 words max.) to C.Schwobel@liverpool.ac.uk by 01 September 2012. Selected speakers will be contacted by 28 September 2012. Draft papers will be due by 01 December 2012. A number of papers will be selected for an edited collection and/or a special issue. Completed papers will be due by end January 2013. The manuscript will be sent for consideration by March 2013.

A registration fee of £50 for academics and £100 for practitioners will be incurred. The registration fee income will go towards a travel grant for postgraduate students.