Parallel Courts

Even as American attention is focused on Iraq’s struggles to rebuild its political and legal systems in the face of violent sectarian divisions, another fractured society – Kosovo – has just begun negotiations to resolve the question of its political independence. The persistent ethnic divisions that have obstructed Kosovo’s efforts to establish multi-ethnic “rule of law” offer lessons in transitional justice for Iraq and other states. In Kosovo today, two parallel judicial systems each claim absolute and exclusive jurisdiction over the province. One system is sponsored by the United Nations administration in Kosovo and is mostly, although not exclusively, staffed by Kosovar Albanians. The other system, run primarily by Kosovar Serbians, is essentially a set of courts-in-exile, the remnants of the previous judicial system that existed before the Serbian government was forced out of Kosovo by NATO bombing in 1999. The parallel courts present a transitional justice issue that is as crucial to rebuilding Kosovo’s post-conflict society as convening a truth commission or conducting criminal trials. On one level, the existence of the parallel courts is a manifestation of the ongoing political dispute over sovereignty. For the residents of Kosovo, the lack of any recognition of judgments between these systems has also created legal chaos in their everyday lives. Conflicting judgments have been issued in civil cases, and criminal defendants are subject to prosecution and punishment in both systems. The palpable injustices that result from these conflicting judgments and repeated trials are undermining confidence in the ongoing process of legal and political transition. This article undertakes an assessment of Kosovo’s parallel systems and of the existing legal models for recognition and enforcement of judgments, with the aim of proposing an appropriate framework for Kosovo to recognize the Serbian parallel judgments. In my survey of the relevant national and international models, I find that each strives to strike a balance between two competing values: (1) certainty in the finality and consistency of legal judgments and (2) ensuring those judgments’ essential fairness. Using these two values as a guide, I assess whether and how the existing models might be adapted to Kosovo’s context, concluding that the proper balance between legal certainty and fairness will permit categorical recognition of most parallel civil judgments, but will require case by case, discretionary review of criminal judgments. Finally, from this analysis, I develop a set of factors for other transitioning states to consider when faced with judgments from ethnic and religious legal institutions or other parallel courts

Sending the Bureaucracy to War

Administrative law has been transformed after 9/11, much to its detriment. Since then, the government has mobilized almost every part of the civil bureaucracy to fight terrorism, including agencies that have no obvious expertise in that task. The vast majority of these bureaucratic initiatives suffer from predictable, persistent, and probably intractable problems - problems that contemporary legal scholars tend to ignore, even though they are central to the work of the writers who created and framed the discipline of administrative law. We analyze these problems through a survey of four administrative initiatives that exemplify the project of sending bureaucrats to war. The initiatives - two involving terrorism financing, one involving driver licensing, and one involving the adjudication of asylum claims - grow out of the two statutes perhaps most associated with the war on terrorism, the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the REAL ID Act of 2005. In each of our case studies, the civil administrative schemes used to fight terrorism suffer from the incongruity of fitting civil rules into an anti-civil project, the difficulties of delegating wide discretion without adequate supervision, and the problem of using inexpert civil regulators to serve complex law enforcement ends. We conclude that anti-terrorism should rarely be the principal justification for a new administrative initiative, but offer some recommendations as to when it might make sense to re-purpose civil officials as anti-terrorism fighters

Minority Rights, Minority Wrongs

Many of the new democracies established in the last twenty years are severely ethnically divided, with numerous minority groups, languages and religions. In conflicts between minorities and the state, human rights and minority rights values are one set of battlefields, and claimed abuses are the weapons of choice for all sides. National human rights institutions stand at the center of these conflicts. Minority groups should be a primary constituency for these institutions. Nonetheless, only a few of the human rights institutions in severely divided states report developing programs directed at minorities, and many shy away from involvement in their conflicts. This article is based on a qualitative study of the work of national human rights institutions with minority groups worldwide, the first study of its kind. Here, I report my findings on the patterns and trends in this work. I then consider the implications of these results for the fundamental questions of the field: How can new democracies manage the inevitable conflicts between minority claims, liberal rights, and other state interests? Can minority rights theories that have been developed in well-established liberal democracies be exported to new democracies and severely divided states? For now, the experiences of national human rights institutions offer a useful lens on these questions. By serving as a forum for dialogue between minority groups and states, they could also play a role in addressing these concerns

Beyond Rights: Legal Process and Ethnic Conflicts

Unresolved ethnic conflicts threaten the stability and the very existence of multi-ethnic states. The realities of ethnic conflict are daunting: ethnic disputes tend to be both persistent and complex, and efforts to use democracy or ethnic-blind policies to deal with those conflicts tend to fail. While multi-ethnic states have struggled to devise political solutions for ethnic conflict, they have largely ignored the role that legal processes might play in resolving ethnic discord. But at certain crucial moments in the development of ethnic conflicts, legal processes such as mediation, adjudication, and constitutional interpretation might effectively address these disputes. This article explores that possibility, reviewing the interdisciplinary literature on the nature of ethnic conflicts, the legal literature on legal processes and conflict resolution, and the example of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is sharply divided by ethnicity, with more than eighty ethnic groups. It has attempted to design legal processes that can respond to its ethnic groups and their conflicts, creating a unique ethnic conflict resolution system. The Ethiopian system does not offer a blueprint for ethnic conflict resolution. It does, however, call upon us to consider whether and how legal processes might be able to ameliorate the threat of ethnic conflict

Theorising Global Governance Inside Out: A Response to Professor Ladeur

Professor Ladeur argues that administrative law’s postmodernism (and by extension Global Administrative Law) necessitates that we move beyond relying on ideas of delegation, account- ability and legitimacy. Global Governance, particularly Global Administrative Law and Global Constitutionalism, should try to adapt and experiment with the changing nature of the postmod- ern legality and support the creation of norms that will adapt to the complexities of globalisation. Ladeur’s contestation, similar to GAL’s propositions, can be challenged. By taking the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a significant contributor to the field of international criminal law, as an example, it is suggested that the creation of networks that Ladeur makes visible may not account for ‘regulatory capture’. This paper will argue that from the outside, the proliferation of networks may suggest that spontaneous accountability is possible. A closer look, however, drawing on anthropological insights from the ICTR, reveals that international institutions are suscepti- ble to capture by special interests. Furthermore, there are two central themes that animate the response to Professor Ladeur: the political nature of international institutions and the history of international law, and the role of institutions in this history

Evidence of Simultaneous Circulation of West Nile and Usutu Viruses in Mosquitoes Sampled in Emilia-Romagna Region (Italy) in 2009

BACKGROUND: In recent years human diseases due to mosquito-borne viruses were increasingly reported in Emilia-Romagna region (Italy), from the chikungunya virus in 2007 to the West Nile virus (WNV) in 2008. An extensive entomological survey was performed in 2009 to establish the presence and distribution of mosquito arboviruses in this region, with particular reference to flaviviruses. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: From May 6 to October 31, a total of 190,516 mosquitoes were sampled in georeferenced stations, grouped in 1,789 pools according date of collection, location, and species, and analyzed by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to detect the presence of RNA belong to Flavivirus genus. WNV was detected in 27 mosquito pools, producing sequences similar to those of birds and human strains obtained in 2008 outbreak, pointed out the probable virus overwintering. Isolation of WNV was achieved from one of these pools. Moreover 56 pools of mosquitoes tested positive for Usutu virus (USUV). Most PCR positive pools consisted of Culex pipiens, which also was the most analyzed mosquito species (81.4% of specimens); interestingly, USUV RNA was also found in two Aedes albopictus mosquito pools. Simultaneous circulation of WNV and USUV in the survey area was highlighted by occurrence of 8 mosquito WNV- and USUV-positive pools and by the overlaying of the viruses "hot spots", obtained by kernel density estimation (KDE) analysis. Land use of sampled stations pointed out a higher proportion of WNV-positive Cx. pipiens pool in rural environments respect the provenience of total sampled pool, while the USUV-positive pools were uniformly captured in the different environments. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Obtained data highlighting the possible role of Cx. pipiens mosquito as the main vector for WNV and USUV in Northern Italy, and the possible involvement of Ae. albopictus mosquito in USUV cycle. The described mosquito-based surveillance could constitute the foundation for a public health alert system targeting mosquito borne arboviruses

Parallel Courts in Post-Conflict Kosovo

In Kosovo today, two parallel judicial systems each claim absolute and exclusive jurisdiction over the province. One system is sponsored by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo ( UNMIK ), the other by the government of Serbia ( Serbia ). The UNMIK courts are new creations, staffed mostly by Kosovo Albanians and a few members of the minority Serb population, but controlled primarily by the international UNMIK administration. For the United Nations, these courts are the incarnation of its claim to have established rule of law under principles of non-discrimination and ethnic integration. For Serbia, they are illegitimate occupiers\u27 courts, symbolizing the continued foreign domination of Serbian territory

International Law Colloquia, Spring 2009 Series

Spring 2009 Presenters: January 23: Eleana A. Baylis (University of Pittsburgh School of Law), Bellwether Trials January 30: Carlos M. Vázquez (Georgetown University Law Center), ’Not a Happy Precedent’: The Story of Ex Parte Quirin February 6: Thomas H. Lee (Fordham Law School), The International Laws of War and the American Civil War February 20: Monica Hakimi (University of Michigan Law School, A Theory of State Bystander Responsibility February 27: David Zaring (University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business), Why Do Some Regulatory Networks Fail, While Others Succeed?” March 20: Andrea K. Bjorklund (UC Davis School of Law), State Immunity and the Enforcement of Investor-State Arbitral Awards April 3: Paul Stephan (University of Virginia School of Law), Privatizing International Law April 6: Rachel Brewster (Harvard Law School), Unpacking the State’s Reputatio

Intelligence and culture: how culture shapes what intelligence means, and the implications for a science of well-being.

This paper discusses the relationship between culture and intelligence. The main message of the paper is that intelligence cannot fully or even meaningfully be understood outside its cultural context. Behaviour that is considered intelligent in one culture may be considered unintelligent in another culture, and vice versa. Moreover, people in different cultures have different implicit (folk) theories of intelligence, so may not even mean the same thing by the word. The relationships between different aspects of intelligence can vary across cultures, with correlations that are positive in one setting proving to be negative in another. The paper opens with a general discussion of issues regarding the relationship between the two concepts. It then describes the theory of successful intelligence, which motivates our work on the interface between culture and intelligence. Finally, the article draws some conclusions