Inhuman Acts

Of the ICTY.

This book examines the way international criminal courts and tribunals have interpreted the crimes against humanity proscription of other inhumane acts. This clause is consistently used in spite of the long list of more specific offences forbidden as crimes against humanity. The volume proposes that the current approach is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the clause. Properly understood, the clause is an invitation to courts to create and apply retroactive criminal laws. This leads to a problem. A prohibition on the use of retroactive criminal laws, one which admits no exceptions, is deeply embedded in international law. The author argues that it is time to revisit the assumption that retroactive criminal laws can never be deployed in a fair legal system. Drawing lessons from an exploration on the way the prohibition on retroactive laws is applied in practice, she proposes a new framework for understanding the clause proscribing the commission of other inhumane acts. This book will be of relevance to anyone interested in international criminal law or criminal law theory. Gillian MacNeil is Assistant Professor at Robson Hall, the Faculty of Law of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.

International criminal law and justice is a flourishing field which has led, in recent years, to new international criminal tribunals and new mechanisms for investigation and holding criminals to account. These developments have, in turn, led to an increasing volume and greater consolidation of case law, and even more scholarly attention. The second edition of this volume of Kai Ambos' seminal treatise has been revised and rewritten in parts to provide coverage of recent developments in the 'Special Part' of international criminal law: namely, the specific crimes and sentencing. Amongst other updates, there are significant extensions of the discussion on sexual and gender-based crimes; the introduction of environmental crimes into international criminal law; further elaboration on the nexus requirement in war crimes and asymmetrical conflicts (e.g., ISIS); and reference to the newly introduced war crimes of the ICC Statute and of the peculiarities of cyber-attacks and other emerging activities. The volume complements Volume I of the treatise on issues relevant to the foundations, general part of international criminal law, and general principles of international criminal justice. Taken together with the other new editions of the three-volume series, this second edition provides an exhaustive guide to every aspect of international criminal law, from fundamental principles to procedures and implementation. Kai Ambos' Treatise remains an indispensable reference work for academics and practitioners of international criminal law.

Written by a team of distinguished and internationally renowned experts, this Oxford Handbook gives an analytical overview of international law as it applies in armed conflicts. The Handbook draws on international humanitarian law, human rights law, and the law of neutrality to provide a comprehensive picture of the status of law in war.

This is the third edition of the pioneering work that has become the standard text in the field. The first edition was one of the earliest to establish that the newly-developing international law of human rights could be set down as any other branch of international law. It also incorporates the complementary fields of international humanitarian law and international criminal law, while addressing the problems associated with their interaction with human rights law. The book is more than a descriptive analysis of the field. It acknowledges areas of unclarity or where developments may be embryonic. Solutions are offered. Recent developments have confirmed the value of solutions proposed in this edition and the previous one. Central to most of the chapters is the human rights norm of most salience in the treatment of prisoners, namely, the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The early chapters focus on the period of first detention, when detainees are most at risk of having information or confessions, however unreliable, extracted by unlawful means. Voices contemplating the legitimacy of such treatment to combat terrorism have been heard in the wake of the atrocities of 11 September 2001. The book finds that the evidence clearly suggests that the absolute prohibition of such treatment remains firm. Other chapters deal with problems of poor prison conditions and of certain extraordinary penalties, notably corporal and capital punishment. A chapter explores ethical codes for members of professions capable of inflicting or preventing the prohibited behaviour (police and medical and legal professionals). Chapters are also devoted to the extreme practice of enforced disappearance and the contribution of the new convention on this phenomenon, as well as to extra-legal executions.

Mankind's preoccupation with survival in this age has given renewed impetus to the idea of a world community deeply concerned with the prevention of friction between nations. The achievement to date has been largely in terms of efforts to control acts of aggression committed by governments. Most people have assumed that the military rivalry between the great powers is the only threat confronting the world today. While readily conceding that this threat has placed mankind in a highly precarious situation, this book, on the other hand, reflects my conviction that any program designed to attain world peace will be significantly incomplete without the control of hostile actions which private persons have been known to commit against foreign nations. Experience shows that these actions not only endanger the good re lations between states, but are also likely to plunge the world com munity into wars, thus spreading destruction and human suffering everywhere.

Analyses the social imaginary of undoing, repair and return underpinning the international norm of restitution-makingApproaches restitution not just as a legal norm of property return, but as a social imaginary and a cultural-psychoanalytic 'scene' of undoing, repair and returnBrings together philosophic-political, socio-legal and cultural-psychoanalytic approaches to the study of restitutionOutlines a heterogeneous and multifaceted idea of restitution emergent in modernity, and looks at the peripheries of the modern restitutive tradition in the search for alternatives and counter-traditionsThis book takes a unique approach grounded in political and cultural discourse to develop a political theory of restitution. Challenging assumptions about restitution in the Western legal and political tradition, where it has become nearly synonymous with reacquisition and where legal studies focus on material objects and claims to their ownership, Zolkos argues that the development of restitutive norms has been auxiliary to the emergence of modern state sovereignty, and excavates the restitutive tradition's mythical-religious substrate. Bringing together texts from within and outwith the Western canon of political theory and philosophy, including the writings of Grotius, Durkheim, Freud, and Klein, as well as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book undertakes a dual task: reading literary texts as a political theorising of restitution, and reading political or sociological texts as literary narratives with distinctive 'restitutive tropes' of repair, undoing and return.

Vol. II, Part 1.