June 26 is a day designated by the United Nations as International Day in support of victims of torture. The General Assembly resolution creating the date imagined this as a day stakeholders – member states and their citizens – would unite in support of those that have endured torture and cruelty and recommit to ending [...]
No current or former President of the United States has faced criminal charges after leaving office. Two Presidents, Richard Nixon and William Clinton, have come close and one Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, plead nolo contendere to charges on the day he left office. With ten ongoing federal and eight ongoing state criminal investigations into Donald Trump, [...]
I. American Border Concentration Camps and the Family Separation Policy as a Crime Against Humanity As noted by Ben Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg Prosecutor, the intentional and unnecessary suffering under the family separation policy can easily be viewed as a crime against humanity under Article 7(1)(k) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal [...]
When John Okada wrote “No-No Boy” in 1957, no one cared. An obscure novel published by a Japanese press, it told the story of a Japanese-American man who chose to resist the draft and go to prison, rather than fight for a country that had forced his family and friends into concentration camps. But today, [...]
The Indian Judiciary faced an unprecedented problem when a former junior court assistant alleged sexual harassment by the current Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi. After the publication of the affidavit of the complainant in media, an urgent hearing was convened in the court of the CJI, comprising of the Chief Justice and Justices Arun [...]
In The Hague last week at the Headquarters of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), policymakers and stakeholders discussed a coherent international approach to accounting for people who have gone missing as a result of conflict and migration, including the conflict in Syria. This is an issue that cuts both internationally and domestically across [...]
“There is no longer a virtuous nation, and the best of us live by candlelight.” -William Butler Yeats From the beginning of his presidency, Donald Trump has presumed a hard and fast distinction between America’s national interest and the broader interests of our “state of nations.” Rather than recognize the indissoluble interdependence of all states, [...]
On May 21, 2019, at the annual meeting of the American Law Institute, members considered a proposal to approve a Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts (RLCC). Members discussed the draft for over four hours and ultimately had to defer the vote for a later meeting due to a lack of time. The subject [...]
On Tuesday, May 21, the Serbian National Assembly passed the Criminal Code amendment which introduced significant changes into the criminal justice system, out of which the most controversial one is the sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP). The LWOP is now prescribed as a possible sentence for some of the most [...]
Targeted killing campaigns are still accelerating under the Trump administration, with fewer constraints and even less transparency. More precisely, it seems that the Obama-era Presidential Policy Guidance has been relaxed in two very meaningful ways: targets of “kill missions” are being expanded to include more Jihadist “Foot Soldiers” (rather than just identifiable terrorist leaders) and directed drone [...]
