Islam & International Criminal Law: A Brief (In) Compatibility Study

This paper explores why that incompatibility between Islam and international criminal law persists and considers recommendations for mitigating that dynamic. Why is this important? Primarily because the Western-influenced international criminal law apparatus and the Muslim world are likely to collide more often in the future. If a war crimes tribunal is established in Afghanistan, or if the trial of Syrian agents for the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister goes forward, it is imperative that Islamic societies touched by those processes feel a sense of “buy-in” or participation that is meaningful for them. Otherwise, it becomes the same old story of Western domination over conflicting Muslim interests, and that story only breeds more resentment and even hatred

United Nations Security Council Permanent Membership and the Veto Problem

Every time a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council casts a veto, or threatens to do so, to protect a client state committing atrocities, or perhaps to protect even themselves when they do so, the legitimacy of the UNSC is further eroded. This erosion has been decades in the making as the U.N. has grown but the UNSC has long ceased to reflect the new power structures in the world today; however, this behavior quickens the pace of that erosion exponentially. A weakened Security Council weakens not only our entire global governance project but also the very collective security goal the United Nations was designed to effectuate

Quiescent Sovereignty of U.S. Territories

Under modern democratic theory, the font of sovereignty springs from the people; however, traces of its past as a power emanating from the Crown continue to haunt the domestic and international status of sub-sovereign legal entities such as U.S. Territories. Quiescent sovereignty describes that which is possessed by the people of the Territories; a sovereignty that is theirs, but that is wielded on their behalf by the federal government. Although fiduciary responsibilities attach to this arrangement, cycles of attention/neglect are the modus vivendi. Bilateral relationships between the Territories and the federal government are varied, but such differences should not impact their voices in Congress. Institutional adjustments to provide more impetus to Territorial issues are readily possible. Just as the European Union came to realize the importance of sub-national input at the federal level by creating the European Union’s Committee of the Regions, so too should the U.S. House of Representatives create a Permanent Select Committee on Territorial Affairs chaired by a Territorial Delegate

Catholic Social Teaching and the Aids Pandemic

Several years before HIV and AIDS became matters of concern, the Second Vatican Council highlighted the importance of promoting and protecting many of these rights when it stated that each person should have ready access to all that is necessary for living a genuinely human life, for example, food, clothing, and housing; the right freely to choose his or her state of life and set up a family; the right to education, and to work, a good name, respect and proper knowledge; the right to act according to the dictates of conscience, to safeguard personal privacy, and to rightful freedom in matters of religion.The Church’s social teaching refers to a body of teaching on social, economic, political and cultural matters developed over a long period by the Catholic Church, but proposed more explicitly and systematically in the years since 1891. The fundamental assumption of this teaching is that each individual is a social being who at every stage of life depends on others for existence and for the fulfillment of spiritual, intellectual, emotional, physical and social needs. Almost seventy years ago, Pope Pius XII expressed this in picturesque language: “individuals do not feel themselves isolated units, like grains of sand, but (are) united by the very force of their nature and by their internal destiny, into an organic, harmonious mutual relationship”. The Second Vatican Council reaffirmed this position very clearly in its statement that the human person is not a solitary being, but a social being who can live and develop his or her full potential only by relating to others