Enabling the victims of international crimes to obtain reparation is crucial to fighting impunity. In Universal Civil Jurisdiction – Which Way Forward? experts of public and private international law discuss one of the key challenges that victims face, namely access to justice. Civil courts in the country where the crime was committed may be biased, or otherwise unwilling or unable to hear the case. Are the courts of other countries permitted, or required, to rule on the victim’s claim? Trends at the international and the domestic level after the Naït-Liman judgment of the European Court of Human Rights offer a nuanced answer, suggesting that civil jurisdiction is not only concerned with sovereignty, but is also a tool for the governance of global problems.

This book brings together jurisprudential debates on international criminal law, international law scholarship on the limits of state sovereignty, and applied political philosophy concerning responsibility and accountability in the context of mass political crimes and state criminality. It offers a compelling view of legal reasoning concerning accountability regimes in the Global South. No other study addresses questions of ethical dimensions of mass crimes and accountability for state criminality.

The doctrine of universal jurisdiction has evolved throughout modern times in the context of global criminal justice as a paramount agent of combating impunity emanating from international criminality. Sierra Leone, as a member of the international community and the United Nations, has, in recent times, been a pioneer in the progressive application and development of international criminal law in the African region. Despite this role, the country’s profile, both in terms of the incorporation and application of the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, is deficient in several major respects falling far short of its dual international obligation not to provide safe havens from justice for perpetrators of international crimes and to combat impunity from such criminogenic acts. Hence, a compelling reason for the author to write this book was to provide a seminal scholarly work on the subject articulating the existing state of the law in Sierra Leone and highlighting the deficiencies in the law and factors inhibiting the exercise of universal jurisdiction in this UN member state. It was also to propose necessary substantive and procedural law reforms in the state’s jurisprudence on the subject. The book is recommended reading for practitioners and scholars in international criminal law and related disciplines. Its accessibility is highly enhanced by relevant tables and summaries of each chapter. Justice Rosolu J.B. Thompson is Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University, USA. He was a member of and Presiding Judge in Trial Chamber I of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

This fully updated second edition of Jurisdiction in International Law examines the international law of jurisdiction, focusing on the areas of law where jurisdiction is most contentious: criminal, antitrust, securities, discovery, and international humanitarian and human rights law. Since F.A. Mann's work in the 1980s, no analytical overview has been attempted of this crucial topic in international law: prescribing the admissible geographical reach of a State's laws. This new edition includes new material on personal jurisdiction in the U.S., extraterritorial applications of human rights treaties, discussions on cyberspace, the Morrison case. Jurisdiction in International Law has been updated covering developments in sanction and tax laws, and includes further exploration on transnational tort litigation and universal civil jurisdiction. The need for such an overview has grown more pressing in recent years as the traditional framework of the law of jurisdiction, grounded in the principles of sovereignty and territoriality, has been undermined by piecemeal developments. Antitrust jurisdiction is heading in new directions, influenced by law and economics approaches; new EC rules are reshaping jurisdiction in securities law; the U.S. is arguably overreaching in the field of corporate governance law; and the universality principle has gained ground in European criminal law and U.S. tort law. Such developments have given rise to conflicts over competency that struggle to be resolved within traditional jurisdiction theory. This study proposes an innovative approach that departs from the classical solutions and advocates a general principle of international subsidiary jurisdiction. Under the new proposed rule, States would be entitled, and at times even obliged, to exercise subsidiary jurisdiction over internationally relevant situations in the interest of the international community if the State having primary jurisdiction fails to assume its responsibility.

The recent proliferation of international courts and jurisdictions raises a number of important issues ranging from the redefinition of the role of the International Court of Justice to the recent emergence of domestic courts as international jurisdictions. Towards a Universal Justice? Putting International Courts and Jurisdictions into Perspective, containing edited articles presented at the International Law Association’s Regional Conference held in Lisbon, offers a comprehensive overview of those issues and outlines challenges ahead for every branch of international law.

"Published with the support of Austrian Science Fund (FWF): PUB 644-G."

In recent years, victims of human rights abuses have filed civil lawsuits in U.S. courts. This litigation provides victims a voice and promotes accountability for violations of international law. This is the story of Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, one of the most significant examples of human rights litigation in the U.S., presented as a documentary history – an approach to legal scholarship that has become increasingly popular in recent years. Unlike traditional casebooks, this book emphasizes the dynamic nature of law. The pleadings and documents appear with minimal editing and are supplemented through commentary by various litigation participants. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

This volume provides a thorough commentary on the articles of the Convention against Torture, with historical context and analysis of relevant case law from monitoring bodie and international, regional and domestic courts.

This book offers a unique critical analysis of the legal nature, effects and limits of UN Security Council referrals to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Alexandre Skander Galand provides, for the first time, a full picture of two competing understandings of the nature of the Security Council referrals to the ICC, and their respective normative interplay with legal barriers to the exercise of universal prescriptive and adjudicative jurisdiction. The book shows that the application of the Rome Statute through a Security Council referral is inherently limited by the UN Charter as well as the Rome Statute, and can conflict with other branches of international law, including international human rights law, the law on immunities and the law of treaties. Hence, it spells out a conception of the nature and effects of Security Council referrals that responds to these limits and, in turn, informs the reader on the nature of the ICC itself.