Transnational Justice Research Articles

How Should the Benefits and Burdens Arising from the Eurozone Be Distributed amongst Its Member States?

How Should the Benefits and Burdens Arising from the Eurozone Be Distributed amongst Its Member States?

India’s Hostility to Internationalize Criminal Justice- A Prejudiced Reluctance?

On May 31, 2013 United Nations urged India to institute a commission of inquiry serving as a transnational justice mechanism, into extra-judicial killings in its north-eastern states. Urging India to repeal the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, United Nations also asked India to ensure that the legislation regarding the use of force by the armed forces provides for the respect of the principles of proportionality and necessity. Various reports have shown that the state violence in Kashmir and North Eastern States of India was institutionalized through a culture of institutional impunity to the state forces which perpetuate the state of human rights violations. India has not acceded to the Rome Statute. It abstained in the vote adopting the statute in 1998, saying it objected to the broad definition adopted of crimes against humanity, the right given to the Security Council to refer cases, delay investigations and bind non-state parties, and the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction not being explicitly outlawed. Even though India has ratified the Geneva Conventions, it has decided to overlook the Common Article 3. In light of the above, this paper highlights why the emerging power India, abstains from joining the Rome Statute and the possibility of India being brought under the scanner of International Criminal Court.

Narrowing the Accountability Gap for Transnational Justice: The Significance of Private International Law in Enforcing Human Rights

Purpose: The study endeavors to investigate the convergence of technologies and the implications for legal pluralism in human rights enforcement. It aims to examine how private international law can adapt to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, block-chain, and the Internet of Things.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: By analyzing select case studies, this research article aims to provide practical examples of how private international law has been applied, or could be applied, to enforce human rights in the digital sphere. It seeks to extract lessons from precedents to inform future legal approaches.
 Findings: Building on the findings, this article aims to propose actionable policy recommendations for lawmakers, regulators, and international organizations. It also aims to speculate on future trends and challenges in the evolving landscape of human rights enforcement in the digital era.
 Implications/Originality/Value: The research strives to explore the ethical dimensions surrounding the application of private international law in the digital age. It aims to establish normative frameworks that balance human rights protection with other legitimate interests.

What We Owe to Each Other in Private International Law - Moral Contractualism and Transnational Justice

What We Owe to Each Other in Private International Law - Moral Contractualism and Transnational Justice

Legal Administration and Dispensation of Justice by International Courts and Tribunals: Analyzing Political Factors Determining Transnational Justice in the Contemporary World

Legal Administration and Dispensation of Justice by International Courts and Tribunals: Analyzing Political Factors Determining Transnational Justice in the Contemporary World

Using visual sociology for transnational justice- pedagogical and methodological implications

ABSTRACT In 2019, I created a 60-minute docudrama titled ‘Mira’s Minders’, which examined specific challenges and incentives associated with working as domestic caregivers in West Bengal, India. My research attempt part intentionally and part serendipitously has materialized into the kind of academic practice hooks (1994) recommends- by reconceptualizing knowledge, by taking on a different route than traditional research, highlighting the minority experience from an unusual context, and through bringing in a diverse worldview to the undergraduate and graduate classroom. And yet materializations of such labors of love require thoughtful deliberation. I discuss the methodological and pedagogical implications associated with making a visual project on social justice, which is transnational in scope. For methodology this requires cultivating a thoughtful research design, initiating a timely research conversation with other stakeholders, developing detailed bilingual interview schedules, juggling research protocols with visual documentation, and finally making sense of a rich and complex repository of data. The pedagogical implications include invoking a form of self-actualization, tasks associated with introducing multiculturalism, establishing the close-knit connection between theory and practice, drawing on empathy and finally facilitating learning through the visual process.

The Nuremberg Trials Public Communications Apparatus

Abstract If the Nuremberg Trials represent the birth of international criminal law (ICL), then the public relations efforts of their personnel represent the birth of ‘communication in international criminal justice’. This aspect of the Allied post-World War II prosecutions of Nazi war criminals has been hitherto underexplored in the literature. This article fills the gap by examining the origins and development of American efforts to give an account of the Nuremberg Trials while they were unfolding and in their immediate aftermath. It begins with the public relations (PR) efforts of Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the initial International Military Tribunal (IMT) trial of the major Nazi war criminals, and his PR ‘right hand man’, Gordon Dean. Jackson and Dean took a multi-prong approach to messaging about the IMT, seeking to educate their Allied partners about the strategic advantages of a due-process-oriented proceeding, while persuading the American political establishment about the nascent Cold War-positioning advantages of such a justice strategy, as well as disabusing the global citizenry of the ‘victors’ justice’ narrative in favour of a ‘global rule of law’ mythology. Once the IMT trial was concluded, and confrontational US-Soviet bipolar reality became entrenched, American personnel for the subsequent Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT) trials took a different tact. In terms of outreach efforts, PR now focused on German attitudes toward prosecution efforts: NMT staff used appeals to justice in a heroic effort to keep resources flowing and the trial timelines open-ended. Bureaucratically, the PR apparatus eventually flowed to the creation of a ‘Special Projects Branch’, which sought to present the public with key excerpts from the NMT trials and provide various German prosecutors’ offices with transcripts and evidence for potential future trials. From its inception, therefore, ICL’s embryonic PR-sphere served as a battleground for competing concerns of transnational justice versus global realpolitik. Between those diametrically opposed policy poles, it carved out a space for education efforts vis-à-vis the local population, preservation of the historical record, and creation of a nascent bureaucratic structure for PR efforts. These modest achievements would lay the groundwork for the modern development of the field of communication in international criminal justice.

Migration and the Demand for Transnational Justice

Domestic courts sometimes prosecute foreign nationals for severe crimes—like crimes against humanity, genocide, torture, and war crimes—committed on foreign territory against foreign nationals. We argue that migrants can serve as agents of transnational justice. When migrants move across borders, as both economic migrants and refugees, they often pressure local governments to conduct criminal investigations and trials for crimes that occurred in their sending state. We also examine the effect of explanatory variables that have been identified by prior scholars, including the magnitude of atrocities in the sending state, the responsiveness of the receiving state to political pressure, and the various economic and political costs of prosecutions. We test our argument using the first multivariate statistical analysis of universal jurisdiction cases, focusing on multiple stages of prosecutions. We conclude that transnational justice is a justice remittance in which migrants provide accountability and remedies for crimes in their sending states.

Transnational Justice: Unveiling the Dynamics of International Administrative Tribunals and Administrative Law

This research article explores the realm of international administrative law, focusing on the pivotal role of international administrative tribunals in adjudicating disputes and ensuring accountability across transnational contexts. Beginning with a post-World War II historical overview, it underscores the tribunals' significance in safeguarding individuals' rights within international organisations. Through an examination of the evolution of international administrative law, including the proliferation of specialised tribunals and refinement of norms, it navigates the tension between autonomy and accountability. Drawing on legal scholarship and practical considerations, it addresses challenges such as defining administrative authority and diverse adjudication approaches. The exploration of the Law of International Civil Service is central to the discussion, providing a framework for understanding applicable legal norms. This research contributes to a clearer understanding and effective implementation of international administrative law in contemporary global governance, offering insights crucial for legal scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.

Compulsory Zionism and Palestinian Existence: A Genealogy

This essay offers a genealogy of the phrase “compulsory Zionism” in order to illuminate its vexed and contradictory intellectual foundations, the ethical and political stakes of the discourse surrounding the phrase, and its accompanying racial project. Scholars of late have taken up the use of this phrase to signal how “common-sense” knowledge about Palestine and Israel is naturalized in ways that privilege Israel and subjugate Palestinian existence. However, I argue that the phrase is also useful for understanding how Palestine solidarity politics are micromanaged within transnational leftist social justice movements and academia.

Southeast Asian New Immigrant-Themed Contemporary Art as an Approach to Anti-Authoritarian Practices at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taiwan

This article examines the exhibition Family Memo-Island of Memory and Migration: Southeast Asia New Immigrant-Themed Contemporary Art (11 May–26 August 2018) at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan. As part of the institution’s transnational justice exhibition, Family Memo was the first and only exhibition to feature South East Asian culture and issues of immigration—especially migrant workers and marriage migrants. This topic created a veiled dialogue with objects that represent Chiang’s authoritarian regime and Taiwan’s days of White Terror, as many Taiwanese see Chiang’s Nationalist Party as a settler/immigrant regime from China to Taiwan. I applied discourse analysis when treating the ‘exhibitionary complex’ (Bennett 1995) as text and analysed the narratives with elements of exhibited objects, written descriptions, and audio text. Data sources include museum annual reports, website information, newsletters, news reports, official publications, museum statements, and interviews with the curator and participating artists. Through literature reviews and interviews with museum staff, curators and several participating artists, I demonstrate how the efforts of the independent curator and artists opened up a variety of narratives of Taiwan, despite the nature of the Memorial Hall’s relationship to authoritarian history. In so doing, the Memorial Hall not only reads the concept of migration in a positive way in a time when labour migrants and marriage migrants are viewed negatively but also unveils its potential in providing a different approach to discuss human rights and anti-authoritarian practices and shared experiences and goals.

A tale of many jurisdictions: how universal jurisdiction is creating a transnational judicial space

AbstractUniversal jurisdiction (UJ), which not very long ago seemed condemned to extinction, is now becoming routine. It has been endorsed by 109 states, and the number of prosecutions is increasing. This article is based on an ethnographic study of the recent trial in France of Pascal Simbikangwa, a Rwandan accused of participating in the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994. Using the concepts of ‘vernacularization’ and ‘transnational legal orders’, it shows how UJ is creating a transnational judicial space (TJS). Involving both partisan and ordinary actors, this process is fraught with multiple conflicts. Although UJ does not participate in the dissemination of a uniform definition of genocide, it makes various jurisdictions work together. This fragmented transnational justice is paradoxically contributing to the integration of national legal systems.

Unjust History and Its New Reproduction\u2014A Reply to My Critics

Demands calling for reparations for historical injustices—injustices whose original victims and perpetrators are now dead—constitute an important component of contemporary struggles for social and transnational justice. Reparations are only one way in which the unjust past is salient in contemporary politics. In my book, Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress, I put forward a framework to conceptualise the normative significance of the unjust past. In this article, I will engage with the insightful comments and try to address the concerns of the contributors to the symposium on my book. I will discuss (i) whether and in what sense my framework incorporates past-regarding duties, (ii) how it is different from causal interpretations of the relationship between past and present injustice, (iii) whether it can carve out a greater place for blame in our thinking about responsibility for (historical) structural injustice, (iv) whether such a responsibility needs to hinge upon an account of solidarity, and (v) how de-temporalising injustice can cast new light on immigration politics. In particular, I will stress and further clarify the importance that the notion of ‘structural debt’, which my book develops to reflect on historical responsibility, can play in thinking about what is owed to an unjust history.

Political justice, political obligation and the European Union: Lessons from Habermas

What principles of political justice ought to apply to the European Union? This question is particularly relevant considering the deepening integration process that resulted from the crises of the past decade. Habermas’s conception of a transnational democracy allows identification of the methodological components of transnational political justice: to unite in a transnational polity, people belonging to different national communities need a common purpose ( finalité), principles governing the distribution of constitutional and legislative power and a common political infrastructure that allows them to form democratic will as free and equal citizens. This article attempts to further expand these points through a public goods approach. European policies generate European public goods. These must be produced and accessed based on a fair cooperation scheme. Identifying these specific fairness conditions allows further clarification on how legislative and constitutional power ought to be distributed within the European polity.

Masculinist states, radioactive contamination, and transnational nuclear justice: a conversation on building bridges across borders

Masculinist states, radioactive contamination, and transnational nuclear justice: a conversation on building bridges across borders

Paramilitarism without Paramilitaries: 'Tres Caínes' and the Representation of Paramilitarism on Colombian TV Screens

The goal of this article is to analyse the representation of the Colombian armed conflict in the controversial TV series Tres Caines (2013), which dramatizes the history of paramilitarism in Colombia through a biographical story of the lives of the three brothers Castano Gil, the leaders and founders of Colombia’s biggest paramilitary group, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). I argue that Tres Caines represents the war through a rhetoric that is close to human rights and transnational justice perspectives, portraying its characters according to a dichotomy between victim and victimizer. Although the series purports to take a neutral position in the conflict, and condemns individual paramilitary leaders, it simultaneously salvages the ideology of paramilitarism, and thereby indirectly supports the political project of Alvaro Uribe Velez. Because of this, despite apparently taking a pacifist stance, the series constitutes a cultural product that works against peace in Colombia, and is an example of how humanitarian discourse can be easily exploited in the service of warmongering and reactionary messaging.

Consciously transnational: Urgenda and the shape of climate change litigation: The State of the Netherlands (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy) v Urgenda Foundation

Moving the focus of climate change litigation from a largely US arena to a global one, Urgenda has helped to foster a burgeoning transnational climate justice jurisprudence. In the first place, it demonstrates how domestic courts are increasingly being used as sites to solidify international commitments. Secondly, it shows that these domestic endeavours are helping to shape the jurisprudence of other states whose courts are increasingly asked to adjudicate on climate change commitments. What is more, courts are conscious of this effect, thus this emerging jurisprudence is not simply an unintended consequence of the localisation of global commitments but is becoming an explicit practice on the part of domestic courts. This case note unpacks and examines the transnational dimensions of the global climate change case law as they are played out in the final decision of the Urgenda litigation.

Theory of Law, Jurilinguistics and Legal Language: A common task

Abstract This paper sets a clear interdisciplinary boundary of the joint work between the Theory of Law and Jurilinguistics, surrounding the role of legal language. The paper attempts to contemplate the challenges of the globalization of Law in the 21st century, and launches the challenge of the formation of a common place, to be established by political language and legal language, in order to favour the procedural and gradual development of Global Law. Thus, today, in the period of transition between international law and cosmopolitan law, the regulation of global life increasingly demanding of translation professionals. For this reason, when practising legal translation, their contribution is not limited to the transition from language a quo to language ad quem, but to the construction of classes that form a tertium, and it is from this residue of translation processes that it starts to open itself to the possibility of a legal expertise common to everybody starts to open up. Jurilinguistics has the task of collating and systemising these practices, to contribute to the Theory of Law, towards achieving the new scale of the project of modernity, that is, the formation of transnational justice.

Four Cases under Examination: Human Rights and Justice in Argentina under the Macri Administration

Since 1983, following the restoration of democracy, Argentina has stood out for its transnational justice policies: it put the military juntas on trial; its National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons investigated the crimes of the dictatorship and, together with its Never Again report, became a model for numerous subsequent truth commissions; it passed reparation laws for the victims, built memory sites, and its new constitution placed international human rights laws above national legislation. More recently, after taking office in 2015, liberal president Mauricio Macri modified the Supreme Court, which then handed down rulings that introduced key philosophical changes in the way abuses were treated. In that framework, this paper will examine four rulings: the “Muiña ruling,” which released an agent of the dictatorship by commuting his sentence based on a law that holds that each year served without a conviction counts as two and which had been repealed when he was arrested; the “Fontevechia ruling,” which rejected the primacy of international human rights treaties over domestic legislation; the “Alespeiti ruling”, which granted house arrest for health reasons to an agent of the dictatorship; and the “Villamil ruling”, which found that the state’s obligation to repair victims was subject to a statute of limitations. The analysis of these rulings will reveal the instrumental use of human rights by the Court, its countering of the cosmopolitan philosophy behind the country’s transnational justice policies, and its alignment with the Macri administration’s rejection of the particular status of<br />crimes against humanity. These cases reveal that the discussion of the international human rights paradigm goes beyond certain populist governments. It is a broader challenge: what is under discussion is the universal nature of human rights and the status of the international system that protects them.

Critiques on the Tribunals and The Hague Court

This critique is a review of heinous crimes. It assesses to connect with perpetrators, victims, people and institutions and change professed through the works of the Tribunals and The Hague Court and share the feeling with the concerned ones. The objectives of the paper are three-fold: (1) to study the situations of the investigation, prosecution and punishment on accountability; (2) to analyze the preference for justice: victors’ justice or victims’ justice; and (3) to access the critiques on violations of human rights and humanitarian law beyond the borders. Experiences on Transitional Justice, Human Security, and Human Rights among others feel touched, inspired and motivated to the author for this pioneer paper. This state-of-the-art paper is examined based on archival research, exchanging and sharing way forward with over 100 international publications and lessons-learned centric theoretical approach comprising snow-ball techniques. The study theorizes: (1) Retributive Justice Theory: Punishment is justified as perpetrator deserves for penalty, equivalent vengeance; (2) Utilitarian Justice Theory: Punishment is justified to mid-and-junior level perpetrators scooting-free to the top-most policymakers including Emperor Hirohito. Allied powers believed that Hirohito can only fight against the communism; (3) Denunciation Justice Theory: Punishment is justified by pressure of society that sends a clear message: offence is a heinous crime and sentencing a perpetrator is logically just; (4) Restorative Justice Theory: Punishment is justified as crimes of perpetrators hurt everyone and justice repairs the damage satisfying through accountability, reparation, rehabilitation and reconciliation; and (5) Transnational Justice Theory: Punishment is justified to operate outside a nation territory that penalizes the perpetrators as a crime of international concern. The Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals had virtually been victor’s justice with self-righteous fraud and lynching bodies. The Tokyo Tribunal never talks about bombings at Chinese cities. The U.S. and its axis powers discourage future aggressions accepting victor’s justice. The UN failed to restore peace and security. Cronyism was/is widespread. All Tribunals seemed pseudo justice bodies. People criticize these for being one-sided, inefficient, ineffectiveness, politicized, lengthy, very costly and unfair bodies. The U.S. and its satellite nations control both Tribunals and The Hague Court providing funds, instruments and staff. The Hague Court is a highly debated body with many flaws, targeting mostly poor and opponent African countries. Most grave crimes committed go unpunished. Thus, justice delivery appears as a sword in a judge's toupee. If The Hague Court is continuously influenced by powerful non-signatories of Statute, the relevance of its functions are hopeless. Justice becomes elusive for the innocent, weak and poor ones.