Volume 112 of Terrorism: Commentary on Security Documents, Discerning President Obama's National Defense Strategy, makes available documents from the first fifteen months of the Obama administration that provide insights into its developing national defense strategy. Included are documents specifically relating to the U.S. Department of Defense and the nation's armed forces. Included is the February 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report of the Department of Defense, one of the most significant documents providing insight into the defense component of national security. General Editor Douglas Lovelace, an expert in U.S. military matters, elucidates the complexities of military spending and of counter-insurgency tactics. Also included are reports detailing the strategy and performance of government agencies involved in the security effort, such as the Department of Homeland Security. These reports shed light on internal department assessments as well as external evaluations. Finally, strategy documents produced by the U.S. armed forces describe the national security policy being implemented by the nation's senior military leaders. Researchers will benefit from the focused and comprehensive nature of these reports.

Many international obligations are subject to exceptions. These can be expressed in several ways: an obligation may be vitiated by the presence of one of its constitutive negative requirements, an obligation may be set aside by the application of another more specific rule, or an actor might have a right to act in a certain way notwithstanding a contrary obligation. Exceptions are also of fundamental practical importance: for example, they affect the allocation of the burden of proof. This volume provides a systematic and analytic study of exceptions to legal obligations in international law and defences for breaches of these obligations. It features contributions written by legal philosophers, who introduce various theoretical approaches to the role of exceptions, and scholars of international law, who elaborate on generic issues applicable to exceptions in international law as well as examine specific issues arising from exceptions in their respective areas of expertise. Topics covered include the use of force, international criminal law, human rights, trade, investment, environment, and jurisdictional immunities.

Judge Mettraux's four-volume compendium, International Crimes: Law and Practice, will provide the most detailed and authoritative account to-date of the law of international crimes. It is a scholarly tour de force providing a unique blend of academic rigour and an insight into the practice of international criminal law. The compendium is un-rivalled in its breadth and depth, covering almost a century of legal practice, dozens of jurisdictions (national and international), thousands of decisions and judgments and hundreds of cases. This second volume discusses in detail crimes against humanity.

We live in the age of international crime but when did it begin? This book examines the period when crime became an international issue (1881-1914), exploring issues such as 'world-shrinking' changes in transportation, communication and commerce, and concerns about alien criminality, white slave trading and anarchist outrages.

Verification in an Age of Insecurity takes the reader into some of the most urgent arms control issues facing the world community, including the nuclear activities of rogue states and threats from sophisticated non-state actors. In the book, national security expert Philip D. O'Neill, Jr. identifies and addresses issues from the resuscitated disarmament agenda, from the comprehensive test ban to fissile material and biological weapons. O'Neill examines the need for shifts in verification standards and policy suitable for our volatile era and beyond it. He surveys recent history to show how established verification procedures fail to produce the certainty necessary to meet today's threats. Verification in an Age of Insecurity goes beyond a discussion of rogue states like North Korea to offer suggestions on how best to bring compliance policy up to date with modern threats.

The Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948, is one of the most important instruments of contemporary international law. It was drafted in the aftermath of the Nuremberg trial to give flesh and blood to the well-known dictum of the International Military Tribunal, according to which 'Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced'. At Nuremberg, senior state officials who had committed heinous crimes on behalf or with the protection of their state were brought to trial for the first time in history and were held personally accountable regardless of whether they acted in their official capacity.
The drafters of the Convention on Genocide crystallized the results of the Nuremberg trial and thus ensured its legacy. The Convention established a mechanism to hold those who committed or participated in the commission of genocide, the crime of crimes, criminally responsible. Almost fifty years before the adoption of the Rome Statute, the Convention laid the foundations for the establishment of the International Criminal Court. It also obliged its Contracting Parties to criminalize and punish genocide.
This book is a much-needed Commentary on the Genocide Convention. It analyzes and interprets the Convention thematically, thoroughly covering every article, drawing on the Convention's travaux preparatoires and subsequent developments in international law. The most complex and important provisions of the Convention, including the definitions of genocide and genocidal acts, have more than one contribution dedicated to them, allowing the Commentary to explore all aspects of these concepts. The Commentary also goes beyond the explicit provisions of the Convention to discuss topics such as the retroactive application of the Convention, its status in customary international law and its future."

An internationally-renowned scholar in the fields of international and transitional justice, Diane Orentlicher provides an unparalleled account of an international tribunals impact in societies that have the greatest stake in its work. In Some Kind of Justice: The ICTYs Impact in Bosnia and Serbia, Orentlicher explores the evolving domestic impact of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which operated longer than any other international war crimes court. Drawing on hundreds of research interviews and a rich body of inter-disciplinary scholarship, Orentlicher provides a path-breaking account of how the Tribunal influenced domestic political developments, victims experience of justice, acknowledgement of wartime atrocities, and domestic war crimes prosecutions, as well as the dynamic factors behind its evolving influence in each of these spheres. Highlighting the perspectives of Bosnians and Serbians, Some Kind of Justice offers important and practical lessons about how international criminal courts can improve the delivery of justice.

Through close analysis of the Canadian context, Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Canada provides an advanced introduction to the challenges and social consequences presented by terrorism today. Featuring contributions from both established and emerging scholars, it tackles key issues within this fraught area and does so from multiple disciplinary perspectives, using historical, quantitative, and qualitative lenses of analyses to reach novel and much-needed insights. Throughout the volume, the editors and contributors cover topics such as the foreign fighter problem, far-right extremism, the role of the internet in fostering global violence, and the media's role in framing the discourse on terrorism in Canada. Also included are essays that look at the struggles to develop specific counter-terrorism policies and practices in the face of these threats. In addition to offering a detailed primer for scholars, policymakers, and concerned citizens, Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Canada confronts the social and legal consequences of mounting securitization for marginalized communities.

The sovereignty of states to enact and enforce laws within their jurisdictions has been recognized since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. There are now, however, accepted global legal norms that transcend national sovereignty and hold states accountable for not including their domestic legal regimes. This volume is the first book-length treatment to describe and explain how legal orders can be interwoven, and what to do about it. Coining the term 'inter-legality', this volume provides essays on the history, primary areas of inter-legality, the concept of jurisdiction, and normative developments prompted by inter-legality. Bringing together a wide range of contributors who stem from a variety of different academic backgrounds, this book aims to answer three questions: does inter-legality occur with some regularity? How does it affect traditional legal concepts such as 'jurisdiction' or 'legal order' or 'responsibility'? And what are the normative implications?

International crimes, such as genocide and crimes against humanity, are complex and difficult to prove, so their prosecutions are costly and time-consuming. As a consequence, international tribunals and domestic bodies have recently made greater use of guilty pleas, many of which have been secured through plea bargaining. This book examines those guilty pleas and the methods used to obtain them, presenting analyses of practices in Sierra Leone, East Timor, Cambodia, Argentina, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Although current plea bargaining practices may be theoretically unsupportable and can give rise to severe victim dissatisfaction, the author argues that the practice is justified as a means of increasing the proportion of international offenders who can be prosecuted. She then incorporates principles drawn from the domestic practice of restorative justice to construct a model guilty plea system to be used for international crimes.

The pursuit of justice is one of mankind's most noble instincts. The International Criminal Court was embraced with enthusiasm when it was founded on 1 July 2002. Despite an auspicious start, the ICC has become one of the nastier manifestations of globalisation with an exclusive focus on Africa. The Court claims to be independent, but is inextricably tied both to the UN Security Council, to which the Court grants special "prosecutorial" rights, and the European Union, which provides most of its funding. It has avoided any action against the wars of aggression waged by Western countries. And while the ICC claims to be a universal Court exercising universal jurisdiction, it does not qualify on either count. Its members represent less than one-third of the world's population: The United States, China, Russia, India and Indonesia are just some of the many countries that have remained outside of the Court's jurisdiction. The Court claims to be fighting impunity, yet it has afforded de fact impunity to several serial abusers of human rights who happen to be friends of the European Union and United States, and granted de jure immunity to non-member states such as the United States. The ICC is a Court whose judges are appointed not because they are the best legal minds in the world, but because of squalid vote-trading. The Court has judges who have never been lawyers, let alone judges. The ICC claims to be victim-centered but has been publicly criticised for its ambivalence towards victim communities. The Court has destroyed peace processes across Africa and exacerbated conflict. In short, it has failed mankind's hopes for justice. This is the book the International Criminal Court does not want you to read.

Introduction written by Professor Benjamin B FerenczThis challenging volume examines the jurisprudence of international criminal justice from various points of view. The philosophy of justice may vary from time to time and from nation to nation, depending on prevailing attitudes towards the substantive rules which deal, in one way or another, with cultural norms. In the national and international area, the principles of criminal justice have a key role in examining the scope of the most serious violations of international criminal law. It is on the basis of appropriate judgment that these principles may be accumulated and achieved for the future conduct of man. This volume, therefore, examines the principles and dimensions of the constitutions of various international criminal tribunals/courts, with particular focus on the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). As such, the volume offers a comprehensive evaluation of the rule of law and criminal justice and their legal tasks within the complementarity system of international criminal jurisprudence.The volume emphasises the prosecution and punishment of all those who may successfully escape from the proceedings of national and international criminal courts because of their juridical, political, religious, economic or military power. It demands the implementation of international law of jus cogens. The provisions of the Statute should not be deduced in contradiction to the norms from which no derogation is possible, such as prohibitions governing crimes against humanity, torture, apartheid, rape, war crimes, genocide and aggression. If the value of the task of the Court is to be realised by the majority of states in the international community, the cycle of impunity has to be abolished in the case of all states, including the five permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations.

As communities struggle to make sense of mass atrocities, expectations have increasingly been placed on international criminal courts to render authoritative historical accounts of episodes of mass violence. Taking these expectations as its point of departure, this book seeks to understand international criminal courts through the prism of their historical function. The book critically examines how such courts confront the past by constructing historical narratives concerning both the culpability of the accused on trial and the broader mass atrocity contexts in which they are alleged to have participated. The book argues that international criminal courts are host to struggles for historical justice, discursive contests between different actors vying for judicial acknowledgement of their interpretations of the past. By examining these struggles within different institutional settings, the book uncovers the legitimating qualities of international criminal judgments. In particular, it illuminates what tends to be foregrounded and included within, as well as marginalised and excluded from, the narratives of international criminal courts in practice. What emerges from this account is a sense of the significance of thinking about the emancipatory limits and possibilities of international criminal courts in terms of the historical narratives that are constructed and contested within and beyond the courtroom.

Over the past decades, international criminal law has evolved to become the operative norm for addressing the worst atrocities. Tribunals have conducted hundreds of trials addressing mass violence in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and other countries to bring to justice perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. But international courts have struggled to hold perpetrators accountable for these offenses while still protecting the fair trial rights of defendants. Punishing Atrocities through a Fair Trial explores this tension, from criticism of the Nuremberg Trials as 'victor's justice' to the accusations of political motivations clouding prosecutions today by the International Criminal Court. It explains why international criminal law must adhere to transparent principles of legality and due process to ensure its future as a legitimate and viable legal regime.

How did a powerful concept in international justice evolve into an inequitable response to mass suffering? For a term coined just seventy-five years ago, genocide has become a remarkably potent idea. But has it transformed from a truly novel vision for international justice into a conservative, even inaccessible term? The Politics of Annihilation traces how the concept of genocide came to acquire such significance on the global political stage. In doing so, it reveals how the concept has been politically contested and refashioned over time. It explores how these shifts implicitly impact what forms of mass violence are considered genocide and what forms are not. Benjamin Meiches argues that the limited conception of genocide, often rigidly understood as mass killing rooted in ethno-religious identity, has created legal and political institutions that do not adequately respond to the diversity of mass violence. In his insistence on the concept's complexity, he does not undermine the need for clear condemnations of such violence. But neither does he allow genocide to become a static or timeless notion. Meiches argues that the discourse on genocide has implicitly excluded many forms of violence from popular attention including cases ranging from contemporary Botswana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the legacies of colonial politics in Haiti, Canada, and elsewhere, to the effects of climate change on small island nations. By mapping the multiplicity of forces that entangle the concept in larger assemblages of power, The Politics of Annihilation gives us a new understanding of how the language of genocide impacts contemporary political life, especially as a means of protesting the social conditions that produce mass violence.

The most commonly cited justification for international criminal law is that it addresses crimes of such gravity that they "shock the conscience of humanity." From decisions about how to define crimes and when to exercise jurisdiction, to limitations on defences and sentencing determinations, gravity rhetoric permeates the discourse of international criminal law. Yet the concept of gravity has thus far remained highly undertheorized. This book uncovers the consequences for the regime's legitimacy of its heavy reliance on the poorly understood idea of gravity. Margaret M. deGuzman argues that gravity's ambiguity may at times enable a thin consensus to emerge around decisions, such as the creation of an institution or the definition of a crime, but that, increasingly, it undermines efforts to build a strong and resilient global justice community. The book suggests ways to reconceptualize gravity in line with global values and goals to better support the long-term legitimacy of international criminal law.

In Red Zones, Marie-Eve Sylvestre, Nicholas Blomley, and Celine Bellot examine the court-imposed territorial restrictions and other bail and sentencing conditions that are increasingly issued in the context of criminal proceedings. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with legal actors in the criminal justice system, as well as those who have been subjected to court surveillance, the authors demonstrate the devastating impact these restrictions have on the marginalized populations - the homeless, drug users, sex workers and protesters - who depend on public spaces. On a broader level, the authors show how red zones, unlike better publicized forms of spatial regulation such as legislation or policing strategies, create a form of legal territorialization that threatens to invert traditional expectations of justice and reshape our understanding of criminal law and punishment.

Terrorism: Commentary on Security Documents is a series that provides primary source documents and expert commentary on various topics relating to the worldwide effort to combat terrorism, as well as efforts by the United States and other nations to protect their national security interests. Volume 148, Lone Wolf Terrorists, examines the phenomenon of the solitary domestic terrorist, analyzes the distinction between such terrorists and mass murderers who are not deemed to be terrorists, considers the motivations of violent extremists, and examines the dilemmas faced by law enforcement in preventing solitary political extremists with violent ideologies from translating their beliefs into actions. The volume is divided into three sections, providing an overview of the topic, an examination of strategies for prevention of such attacks, and a consideration of the Internet's role in contributing to radicalization. Documents included in this volume include a CRS report on domestic terrorism, a report examining violent radicalization from a criminal justice perspective, and a CRS report differentiating hate crimes from domestic terrorism, as well as other reports on the lone wolf terrorism phenomenon and strategies to prevent and/or counter it. The last document in the volume is a CRS report relating to the advocacy of terrorism on the Internet, especially including social media, and the ways in which law enforcement might be able to address the problem of dangerous online speech within the current U.S. legal structure.

Alongside existing regimes for victim redress at the national and international levels, in the coming years international criminal law and, in particular, the International Criminal Court, will potentially provide a significant legal framework through which the harm caused by egregious conduct can be addressed. Drawing on a wealth of comparative experience, Conor McCarthy's study of the Rome Statute's regime of victim redress provides a comprehensive exploration of this framework, examining both its reparations regime and its scheme for the provision of victim support through the ICC Trust Fund. The study explores, in particular, whether the creation of a regime of victim redress has a role to play as part of a system for the administration of international criminal justice and, more generally, whether it has such a role alongside other regimes, at the national and international levels, by which the harm suffered by victims of egregious conduct may be redressed.

Terrorism: Commentary on Security Documents is a series that provides primary source documents and expert commentary on various topics relating to the worldwide effort to combat terrorism, as well as efforts by the United States and other nations to protect their national security interests. Volume 147, Assessing the 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy, evaluates the changes in U.S. national security policy indicated in the National Security Strategy published by the Trump administration in 2017, as well as the U.S. National Defense Strategy, a summary of which was made available to the public in 2018. The volume also takes a close look at the comparable strategy documents of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China (PRC), the two greatest competitors of the U.S. in the global power structure, in addition to considering the U.S. security posture in the broader international context. In addition to including the text of the 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy and the 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy, this volume also includes the Russian Federation's Foreign Policy Concept, National Security Strategy, and Military Doctrine, and China's national defense, military strategy, and Asia-Pacific cooperation documents, as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping's October 2017 speech to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China outlining the way forward for the PRC. Two 2017 CRS reports examining U.S. security strategy in the international context are also included: U.S. Role in the World: Background and Issues for Congress and A Shift in the International Security Environment: Potential Implications for Defense-Issues for Congress.

Famine is an age-old scourge that almost disappeared in our lifetime. Between 2000 and 2011 there were no famines and deaths in humanitarian emergencies were much reduced. The humanitarian agenda was ascendant. Then, in 2017, the United Nations identified four situations that threatened famine or breached that threshold in north-eastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. Today, this list is longer. Each of these famines is the result of military actions and exclusionary, authoritarian politics conducted without regard to the wellbeing or even the survival of people. Violations of international law including blockading ports, attacks on health facilities, violence against humanitarian workers, and obstruction of relief aid are carried out with renewed impunity. Yet there is an array of legal offenses, ranging from war crimes and crimes against humanity to genocide, available to a prosecutor to hold individuals to account for the deliberate starvation of civilians. However, there has been a dearth of investigations and accountability for those violating international law. The reasons for this neglect and the gaps between the black-letter law and practice are explored in this timely volume. It provides a comprehensive overview of the key themes and cases required to catalyze a new approach to understanding the law as it relates to starvation. It also illustrates the complications of historical and ongoing situations where starvation is used as a weapon of war, and provides expert analysis on defining starvation, early warning systems, gender and mass starvation, the use of sanctions, journalistic reporting, and memorialization of famine.

The adage 'ignorance of the law is no excuse' is significantly inaccurate. Ignorance and mistake of law do, under certain circumstances, exclude responsibility both in national and international criminal law. This monograph updates the existing reviews of law and practice on the topic, aiming to go a step further: it takes the analysis of mistake of law as a starting point for systematic observations about international criminal law in general. First, the volume defines the contours of the defence of mistake of law in general theory of criminal law, distinguishing it from cognate defences and highlighting, most notably, its connection with superior orders. Secondly, it gives an overview of the possible approaches to the defence, offering examples from national law as terms of reference for the subsequent analysis of international criminal law. Thirdly, it surveys the relevant law and practice of international criminal tribunals, with a focus on the International Criminal Court, and it contemplates offences for which a defence of mistake of law may potentially succeed. Finally, the author tries to interpret what the rules on mistake of law applicable before international criminal tribunals imply about the purpose of punishing individuals and to the legitimacy of such punishment. Whilst the discourse on international criminal law is more and more concerned with global politics, The Defence of Mistake of Law in International Criminal Law brings back the focus on the appropriateness of imposing a guilty verdict on the individual defendant, a human being constituting the basic unit of each society.

This book analyses the use of the expression 'serious violations of human rights', and similar ones, such as 'gross' or 'grave', in international practice. It highlights some of the recurring responses and consequences to such violations and suggests that a new special regime - eponymous to the above-mentioned expression - was formed. This special regime is understood as substantively limited to a very specific issue-area of human rights violations. Within this regime, a series of monitoring mechanisms and procedures are in place to highlight, document, and record such violations; specific measures are taken to enforce compliance; and certain consequences arise focused on remedying the victims of such violations. As such, this special regime is comprised of at least four thinly interconnected components: the substantive, the monitoring, the enforcement, and the remedial ones. This monograph constitutes a first step towards the recognition of such a regime, allowing far more constructive and coherent elaboration in the future. Practice around this category of violations may well evolve in a different direction than the one suggested here. However, what becomes apparent from this work is that the serious violations of human rights are a key notion in the international legal order as it allows the international community to depict those factual situations requiring its attention and action.

Over the past ten years the content and application of international law in armed conflict has changed dramatically. This Oxford Handbook provides an authoritative and comprehensive study of the role of international law in armed conflict and engages in a broad analysis of international humanitarian law, human rights law, refugee law, international criminal law, environmental law, and the law on the use of force. With an international group of expert contributors, the Handbook has a global, multi-disciplinary perspective on the place of law in war. The Handbook consists of 32 chapters in seven parts. Part I provides the historical background of international law in armed conflict and sets out its contemporary challenges. Part II considers the relevant sources of international law. Part III describes the different legal regimes: land warfare, air warfare, maritime warfare, the law of occupation, the law applicable to peace operations, and the law of neutrality. Part IV introduces crucial concepts in humanitarian law: the use of weapons, proportionality, the principle of distinction, and internal armed conflict. Part V looks at rights issues: life, torture, fair trials, the environment, economic, social and cultural rights, the protection of cultural property, and the human rights of members of the armed forces. Part VI covers key issues in times of conflict: the use of force, terrorism, unlawful combatants, mercenaries, forced migration, and issues of gender. Part VII deals with accountability for war crimes, the responsibility of non-state actors, compensation before national courts, and, finally, transitional justice.