International Courts in Atypical Political Environments: The Interplay of Prosecutorial Strategy, Evidence, and Court Authority in International Criminal Law

International audienc

The social and professional structure of international justice: from scholarly insiders to the pull of multinational corporate law firms

Where does international justice draw its authority in an international scene largely driven by self-regulated professional markets for the settlement of transnational disputes? To revisit this classical debate, this article connects the professional and social structure of dispute settlement mechanisms to their social credibility among users of international justice. Drawing on extensive biographical databases, it suggests that the growth of investor-state disputes is favoring a shift from a professional market shaped by scholarly insiders to one dominated by corporate legal elites. It links this dynamic of the field to the contrasted development of the scholarly meritocracy of international adjudicators, and the model of the Wall Street law firm that sustains the expansion of private arbitration. These changes are further reflected in growing alignments within the wider marketplace of users of international justice to structural changes in the global economy that favor the expansion of flexible strategies of dispute settlement

Isaac Forster

Galerie des internationalistes. Société française de droit internationa

Investigating the impact of optical selection effects on observed rest frame prompt GRB properties

Measuring gamma-ray burst (GRB) properties in their rest-frame is crucial to understand the physics at work in gamma-ray bursts. This can only be done for GRBs with known redshift. Since redshifts are usually measured from the optical spectrum of the afterglow, correlations between prompt and afterglow emissions may introduce biases in the distribution of rest-frame properties of the prompt emission. Our analysis is based on a sample of 90 GRBs with good optical follow-up and well measured prompt emission. 76 of them have a measure of redshift and 14 have no redshift. We estimate their optical brightness with their R magnitude measured two hours after the trigger and compare the rest frame prompt properties of different classes of GRB afterglow brightness. We find that the optical brightness of GRBs in our sample is mainly driven by their intrinsic afterglow luminosity. We show that GRBs with low and high afterglow optical fluxes have similar Epi , Eiso , Liso , indicating that the rest-frame distributions computed from GRBs with a redshift are not significantly distorted by optical selection effects. However we found that the rest frame T90 distribution is not immune to optical selection effect, which favor the selection of GRBs with longer durations. Finally, we note that GRBs in the upper part of the Epi-Eiso plane have fainter optical afterglows and we show that optical selection effects strongly favor the detection of GRBs with bright afterglows located close or below the best-fit Epi-Eiso relation, whose redshift is easily measurable.Comment: 41 pages, 10 figures, 7 tables. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1503.0276

Prosecutorial Strategies and Opening Statements:: Justifying International Prosecutions from the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg through to the International Criminal Court

Forschung über das internationale Strafrecht fokussiert für gewöhnlich auf strategische Entscheidungen der Ankläger, die die Aufnahme von Ermittlungen, die Kompetenz der Staatsanwaltschaft und den Geltungsbereich der juristischen Verfolgung von Kriegsverbrechen betreffen. Darüber hinaus gibt es wenig Erkenntnisse darüber, wie Strafverfolgungen innerhalb der internationalen Strafgerichtsbarkeit begründet werden. Auf der Grundlage der Anklageeröffnungen von vier Chefanklägern des Internationalen Militärgerichtshofes in Nürnberg sowie der Eröffnungsreden dreier Fälle vor dem Internationalen Strafgerichtshof untersucht dieser Beitrag die Bandbreite der Begründungen, die Strafverfolger in internationalen Strafgerichtsprozessen heranziehen. So ist zu erkennen, dass die Ankläger in Nürnberg auf eine Vielzahl von Begründungen aufbauten, während sich die Anwälte des Internationalen Strafgerichtshofes auf ein engeres System an Begründungen beriefen. Darüber hinaus zeigen Interviews, dass die Ankläger beider Gerichte jeweils geopolitischen Parametern unterworfen waren und dass die Nürnberger Ankläger sich auf stärker ausformulierte Rechtsbegründungen stützen konnten als die Ankläger des Strafgerichtshofes