Yale Law Library - Foreign and International Blog : international tribunal

After Genocide - Rwanda & Beyond

Teresa Miguel — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:39:00 GMT

Our very own Zachary D. Kaufman, YLS JD Candidate '09, will be giving a book talk this Friday, April 17, 2009, at 4:00pm, in the Law Library's L3 Periodical Reading Room. Zach, an Olin Fellow and editor-in-chief of the Yale Law & Policy Review edited After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond with Philip Clark, research fellow at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, and co-founder of Oxford Transitional Justice Research.

In After Genocide, published by Columbia University Press, ". . . leading scholars and practitioners analyze the political, legal, and regional impact of events in post-genocide Rwanda within the broader themes of transitional justice, reconstruction, and reconciliation."

The book includes ". . . chapters from Rwandan academics and practitioners, such as Tom Ndahiro, Solomon Nsabiyera Gasana, and Jean Baptiste Kayigamba—all of whom are also survivors of the 1994 genocide—and draws on their personal experiences. After Genocide constitutes the most comprehensive survey to date of issues related to post-genocide Rwanda and transitional justice." Read a more complete description of the book.

After Genocide is not on our shelves yet, but it will be very soon!

On a related note, to start researching the domestic law of Rwanda, begin with our Country-by-Country guide. A nice portal to Rwandan legislation is Lexadin's World Law Guide. Also, a simple Morris "Call Number" search for Rwanda -- KTD --will return a list of titles that have been assigned to Rwandan law. Other human rights materials related to Rwanda are found elsewhere in the library collection. A Morris Subject Heading" search, human rights rwanda, will return more resources cataloged primarily under human rights rather than strictly Rwandan law.

War Crimes Research Portal and Webcasts

Teresa Miguel — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:03:00 GMT

The Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve law school has developed an exiting new War Crimes Research Portal. The portal has four features:

the portal contains over a thousand links to websites related to international humanitarian law, arranged alphabetically by subject area and including a summary of the content of each site;
the portal contains the text of over 120 research memoranda on issues pending before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the International Criminal Court. The memos can be searched by date published, title, or keywords. (Cites to the memos should take the following form: [Author’s name], [Title of Memo], Research Memorandum Prepared for the Office of the Prosecutor of the [Name of Tribunal], [Date].);
there is a Research Guide to international humanitarian law and tribunals, prepared by the Case Law School Law Library, which includes a bibliography of relevant articles and books, as well as links to international law journals on the Web;
the portal contains "instant analysis" articles, written each month by the members of the American Branch of the International Association of Penal Law, on the hottest topics in international criminal law.

Frederick K. Cox International Law Center also has webcasts available of recent events:

War Crimes Research Symposium: The International Criminal Court and the Crime of Aggression
Speakers: M. Cherif Bassiouni, Mark Ellis, Don Ferencz, William Schabas and many more
http://law.case.edu/lectures/webcast.asp?dt=20080926
Klatsky Seminar in Human Rights: The Future of Human Rights
Speaker Information: Geoffrey Robertson, Queen's Counsel, formerly of the SCSL
http://law.case.edu/lectures/webcast.asp?dt=20081106

When searching for books on war crimes and humanitarian law in Morris, try searching by the following Subject Headings:

war crime trials
war (international law)
guerillas (international law)

Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal

Teresa Miguel — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:10:00 GMT

The Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, established on January 19, 1981 and located in the Hague, was created in an effort to resolve the crisis between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America arising from the detention of 52 United States nationals at the United States Embassy in Tehran which commenced in November 1979, and the subsequent freeze of Iranian assets by the United States of America.

The Tribunal has jurisdiction to decide claims of United States nationals against Iran and of Iranian nationals against the United States which arise out of:

debts, contracts, expropriations or other measures affecting property rights;
certain "official claims" between the two Governments relating to the purchase and sale of goods and services;
disputes between the two Governments concerning the interpretation or performance of the Algiers Declarations; and,
certain claims between United States and Iranian banking institutions.

The Official website of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal is in both English and Persian. It contains background information, governing documents, and a searchable database of tribunal decisions, awards, and other documents. You must register for the database; it is free and login information will be emailed to you within a week or so.

Yale Law Library also has the complete collection of decisions and awards in the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal Reports - KZ238.I7 I73 on L1. We also have monographs on L1 analyzing the tribunal and the decisions of the tribunal. See, for example:

The Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at 25: the cases everyone needs to know for investor-state & international arbitration - KZ238.I7 D72 2007
The Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and the process of international claims resolution: a study by the Panel on State Responsibility of the American Society of International Law - KZ 238.I7 I733 2000
UNCITRAL arbitration rules as interpreted and applied: selected problems in light of the practice of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal - KZ238.I7 P45 1994

Special Tribunal for Lebanon

Teresa Miguel — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:31:00 GMT

On February 14, 2005, Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 other were killed in a bomb attack in Beirut. The act was immediately condemned as a "terrorist bombing" in a formal statement by the President of the United Nations Security Council. Shortly thereafter, the U.N. appointed an international independent investigation Commission. About one year later, on May 29, 2006, pursuant to Security Council resolution 1664, the United Nations and the Lebanese Republic negotiated an agreement on the establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Further, pursuant to Security Council resolution 1757 (Annex and Statute included) of May 30, 2007, the U.N. Security Council held, inter alia, that the Statute of the Special Tribunal, would enter into force on June 10, 2007.

The U.N. Special Tribunal website has a complete list of documents relating to the creation of the Special Tribunal. There is also a timeline of events and a factsheet explaining the procedures and applicable law of the Special Tribunal.

Lebanese criminal law relating to the prosecution and punishment for acts of terrorism and crimes and offenses against life and personal integrity will apply to the Special Tribunal; the death penalty and forced labor have been excluded as possible punishments for those found guilty.

The Law Library of Congress has created a report, the Hariri Assassination Legal Commentary, also available in pdf, that "explains some of the legal issues relevant to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon by discussing:

the jurisdictional basis for international judicial bodies;
examining the jurisdictional reach of mixed tribunals;
exploring the legal nature of the February 14, 2005 bombing; and
identifying a number of legal questions for which the final answers may shape radically the jurisdictional reach of international criminal law."

Ulrich Mans and Lisette Sinkeler of the Hague Center for Strategic Studies express their opinion on the Special Tribunal (also in pdf). The report notes that eight anti-Syrian politicians have been killed since 2004, and acknowledges that the Hague will become, for Lebanese and Syrians, a place of "public accusation of the most influential elites in Syria."

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad repeatedly denies that his country had anything to do with the murder of Prime Minister Hariri. (See, CNN interview, among many other news reports in the BBC, NYT, and others).

Security Council Report, a non-profit working with Columbia University's Center on International Organization, has monthly reports on Lebanon as well as key U.N. documents referenced in their reports.