Extraordinary crimes at ordinary times: International justice beyond crisis situations

Northwestern University Law Review

Volumn 101, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 1257-1314

  Starr, Sonja ^a  

^a HARVARD LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

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EID: 34548237790     PISSN: 00293571     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (59)

1. I use this term to refer to wars and other periods of extraordinary upheaval.
2. Hilary Charlesworth, International Law: A Discipline of Crisis, 65 MOD. L. REV. 377, 377 (2002).
3. Id;
4. see Gerry Simpson, On the Magic Mountain: Teaching Public International Law, 10 EUR. J. INT'L L. 70, 72 (1999).
5. Charlesworth, supra note 2, at 382-86. Gerry Simpson argues that a similar "ahistoricism" infects international law teaching: students are presented with "disputes" that seem to "arise from nowhere, pre-existing, offering themselves up for legal resolution."
6. Simpson, supra note 3, at 88-89.
7. Charlesworth, supra note 2, at 387.
8. Id. at 387-88;
9. see also Anne Orford, Muscular Humanitarianism: Reading the Narratives of the New Interventionism, 10 EUR. J. INT'L L. 679, 683, 695, 699, 702 (1999).
10. Charlesworth, supra note 2, at 382, 389.
11. Id. at 389.
12. Id.
13. David Kennedy, The Nuclear Weapons Case, in INTERNATIONAL LAW, THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS 472 (Laurence Boisson de Chazoumes & Philippe Sands eds., 1999);
14. see also Thomas Pogge, Recognized and Violated by International Law: The Human Rights of the Global Poor, 18 LEIDEN J. INT'L L. 717, 725 (2005);
15. Makau Mutua, What is TWAIL?, 94 AM. SOC'Y INT'L L. PROC. 31, 31 (2000);
16. B.S. Chimni, An Outline of a Marxist Course on Public International Law, 17 LEIDEN J. INT'L L. 1, 2 (2004).
17. See William C. Adams, Whose Lives Count? TV Coverage of Natural Disasters, 36 J. COMM. 113 (1986);
18. Jack Shafer, Disaster by Numbers, SLATE, June 1, 2006, http://www.slate.com/id/2142768/
19. (quoting Alexander Cockbum, Death Rampant! Readers Rejoice, [MORE], Dec. 1973).
20. Fred H. Cate, Media, Disaster Relief and Images of the Developing World, Report of the Annenberg Washington Program, Northwestern University, March 1994, http://www.annenberg.northwestem. edu/pubs/disas/disas10.htm.
21. See, e.g., Declan Butler, Agencies Fear Global Crises Will Lose Out to Tsunami Donations, 433 NATURE 94 (2005);
22. Egbert Sondorp & Olga Bornemisza, Public Health, Emergencies and the Humanitarian Impulse, 83 BULL. OF THE W.H.O. 163 (2005).
23. See, e.g., Douglas A. Van Belle, Bureaucratic Responsiveness to the News Media, 20 POL. COMM. 263 (2003);
24. Jean-Sébastien Rioux & Douglas A. Van Belle, The Influence of Le Monde Coverage on French Foreign Aid Allocations, 49 INT'L STUD. Q. 481 (2005).
25. See A. Cooper Drury et al., The Politics of Humanitarian Aid, 67 J. POL. 454 (2005).
26. See Ken Silverstein, Follow the Leader, AM. JOURNALISM REV., Nov. 1993, at 30.
27. Claire Sayce, Hard Truths and Soft Solutions: The Aid Industry's Approach to the Emergency in Zimbabwe, Sept. 2004, at 9, http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0000952/index.php (citing "the need to earn and spend money fast").
28. Erica Burman, Innocents Abroad: Western Fantasies of Childhood and the Iconography of Emergencies, 18 DISASTERS 238, 246-48 (1994);
29. see also Thomas Keenan, Mobilizing Shame, 103 S. ATL. Q. 435 (2004).
30. Alina Sajed, Between Scylla & Charybdis: The Ethical and Moral Dilemmas of Humanitarian Action 6, 16 (York Centre for Int'l & Sec. Stud. Working Paper No. 31, Jan. 2005);
31. Adam Jones, Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention: Incorporating the Gender Variable, J. HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE, Nov. 26, 2002, http://jha.ac/articles/a080.htm.
32. David Rieff, The Humanitarian Trap, 12 WORLD POL'Y J. 1, 1-11 (1995-96).
33. For example, the international community largely misunderstood the Ethiopian government's role in creating and exploiting the famine of 1983-85, and gave assistance that advanced the government's agenda of mass forcible displacement, See, e.g., Sajed, supra note 19, at 10-11;
34. David Marcus, Famine Crimes in International Law, 97 AM. J. INT'L L. 245, 255-59 (2003).
35. See U.N. Charter arts. 24(1), 33-34, 37, 39, 48.
36. See id. at pmbl.
37. See, e.g., BARRY BUZAN ET AL., SECURITY: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS 49-52 (1998);
38. see also Hilary Charlesworth, The Missing Voice: Women and the War in Iraq, 7 OR. REV. INT'L L. 5, 21-23 (2005).
39. See generally S. NEIL MACFARLANE & YUEN FOON KHONG, HUMAN SECURITY AND THE UN: A CRITICAL HISTORY (2006) (tracing the rise of the "human security" paradigm);
40. BUZAN ET AL., supra note 24 (discussing various contemporary conceptions of security).
41. See UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT (1994);
42. Kofi Annan, Towards a Culture of Peace (Aug. 22, 2001), http://www.unesco.org/opi2/lettres/ TextAnglais/AnnanE.html;
43. see also MACFARLANE & KHONG, supra note 25, at 139-42.
44. See, e.g., Mark Neufeld, Democratization in/of Canadian Foreign Policy: Critical Reflections, 58 STUD. POL. ECON. 97 (1999).
45. Today, this is the most common meaning given to "international criminal law," although the term can be defined in multiple ways. I have picked the definition that corresponds to the body of law that international criminal tribunals enforce (although it can also be enforced by domestic courts). A broader interpretation of "international criminal law" would encompass "suppression treaties" that compel states to criminalize certain conduct (usually "transnational" crimes like drug trafficking) as a matter of domestic law and to cooperate with one another in enforcement. Suppression treaties impose international legal responsibility on the state; in contrast, international criminal law as I have defined it imposes responsibility directly on the individual. See BRUCE BROOMHALL, INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE & THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT 9-10 (2003);
46. ROBERT CRYER, PROSECUTING I NTERNATIONAL CRIMES: SELECTIVITY AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW REGIME 1-3 (2005). Suppression treaties have not been limited to crises, but deal regularly with acts viewed as "nothing out of the ordinary."
47. James Crawford, The Drafting of the Rome Statute, in FROM NUREMBERG TO THE HAGUE: THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE 120-22 (Philippe Sands ed., 2003). I do not focus on these treaties because my concern is whether international criminal tribunals could be useful in addressing non-crisis crimes, in comparison to alternative mechanisms. Suppression treaties must be considered among those alternatives, and I do so in Part II with respect to grand corruption.
48. See, e.g., INTERNATIONAL CRIMES, PEACE, AND HUMAN RIGHTS: THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT xi (Dinah Shelton ed., 2000) [hereinafter INTERNATIONAL CRIMES] ("The aim of international criminal justice is essentially to deter crime and help restore international peace and security by punishing those responsible for international crimes committed during armed conflicts.");
49. Patrick Zahnd, How the International Criminal Court Should Help Implement International Humanitarian Law, in INTERNATIONAL CRIMES, supra, at 43 ("The [ICC] is being established in order to address . . . the fact that too many atrocities are committed during [armed] conflicts.");
50. Allison Marston Danner & Jenny S. Martinez, Guilty Associations: Joint Criminal Enterprise, Command Responsibility, and the Development of International Criminal Law, 93 CAL. L. REV. 75, 77, 79 (2005) ("Contemporary inter-national criminal law is largely concerned with holding individual defendants responsible for mass atrocities.");
51. M. Cherif Bassiouni, The Future of International Criminal Justice, 11 PACE INT'L L. REV. 309, 312 (1999);
52. Theodor Meron, Procedural Evolution in the ICTY, 2 J. INT'L CRIM, JUST. 520, 520 (2004);
53. Michael P. Scharf, Self-Representation Versus Assignment of Defense Counsel Before International Criminal Tribunals, 4 J. INT'L CRIM. JUST. 31, 39 (2006).
54. See, e.g., PIERRE HAZAN, JUSTICE IN A TIME OF WAR (James Thomas Snyder trans., 2004);
55. Laurel E. Fletcher & Harvey M. Weinstein, A World Unto Itself? The Application of International Justice in the Former Yugoslavia, in MY NEIGHBOR, MY ENEMY: JUSTICE AND COMMUNITY IN THE AFTERMATH OF MASS ATROCITY 29 (Eric Stover & Harvey M. Weinstein eds., 2004);
56. Mark Osiel, The Banality of Good: Aligning Incentives Against Mass Atrocity, 105 COLUM. L. REV. 1751, 1759(2005).
57. See, e.g., Payam Akhavan, Beyond Impunity: Can International Criminal Justice Prevent Future Atrocities?, 95 AM. J. INT'L L. 7, 7-9 (2001);
58. Laurel E. Fletcher, From Indifference to Engagement: Bystanders and International Criminal Justice, 26 MICH. J. INT'L L. 1013, 1017 (2005). Transitional justice goals include punishing perpetrators of mass violence, providing an accurate historical record, and enabling shattered societies to reconcile and heal.
59. See International Center for Transitional Justice, What Is Transitional Justice?, http://www.ictj.org/en/tj/ (last visited Feb. 3, 2007).