Katyn Forest Massacre: Of Genocide, State Lies, and Secrecy

The Soviet secret police murdered thousands of Poles near the Katyn Forest, just outside the Russian city of Smolensk, in the early spring of 1940. The Soviets targeted members of the Polish intelligentsia-military officers, doctors, engineers, police officers, and teachers-which Stalin, the Soviet leader, sought to eradicate preventively. At the start of World War II, the Soviet Union viewed Poland as attractive territory, to be conquered and potentially annexed after the war. The Katyn massacre was not discovered until 1943, by the Germans, who instantly blamed the Soviets. The latter, however, blamed the Germans, and the Western Allies begrudgingly accepted this untruthful claim. The Katyn Forest Massacre remained taboo for many years, and it has only attracted significant scholarly, historical and political interest in the last two decades, following the fall of the Iron Curtain. This Article seeks to decipher the Katyn myth by describing in Part II the events that led to the Katyn Forest Massacre as well as the killings themselves. In Part III, this Article focuses on subsequent investigations into Katyn, including the US. congressional inquiry in 1952, as well as post-Cold War revelations about Katyn, permitting to officially inflict responsibility on the Soviet Union. In Part IV, the Article examines the Katyn killings in light of international law, concludes that the killings constitute war crimes and, crimes against humanity, and that they may perhaps constitute genocide, under a more expansive reading of the Genocide Convention. Finally, Part V concludes that the admission of guilt by Russia about its role at Katyn is necessary and plays a crucial role in the thawing of Russian-Polish relations

Seeking the Best Forum to Prosecute International War Crimes: Proposed Paradigms and Solutions

This Article will focus on some of the practical considerations underlying the decision to resort to a particular type of prosecution: international, hybrid, or national. Part II of this Article will describe the ICTY\u27s referral of the Ademi/Norac case to Croatian national courts, focusing on the reasons underlying the referral, as well as on the appropriateness of the referral in light of international criminal law. Part III will then focus on the Special Court, in an effort to assess whether such a hybrid tribunal is a better form of international justice. Finally, Part IV will outline certain paradigms in an effort to propose solutions for certain types of cases and to determine which type of prosecution, international, hybrid or national, is best for each situation

Corporate Liability for Human Rights Violations: The Future of the Alien Tort Claims Act

The article discusses issue of corporate liability under the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act

Rethinking Amnesty

This Article will focus on the issue of accountability under the existing international law and will address the following question: Is there a duty to prosecute perpetrators of human rights abuses? Furthermore, if there is such a duty, what are its precise contours, its reach and its limits? Can amnesty laws and truth commissions ever be legal despite the evolving body of human rights law that seems to dictate the absolute assurance of those rights? Part I of this Article will examine the existing accountability mechanisms, while evaluating their respective strengths and weaknesses. Part II will focus on the existing state practice regarding amnesty laws in the context of two different political and geographic paradigms, Latin America and South Africa. Part III will study the international documents and customs imposing legal obligations on states to provide for effective accountability measures. Finally, Part IV will seek to define particular circumstances under which amnesty provisions and truth commissions do or do not fulfill the global mandates of justice as it relates to individual responsibility. Do amnesty laws provide for de facto impunity, or do they represent effective methods of achieving a legitimate form of accountability while preserving internal peace and stability

Katyn Forest Massacre: Of Genocide, State Lies, and Secrecy

The Soviet secret police murdered thousands of Poles near the Katyn Forest, just outside the Russian city of Smolensk, in the early spring of 1940. The Soviets targeted members of the Polish intelligentsia-military officers, doctors, engineers, police officers, and teachers-which Stalin, the Soviet leader, sought to eradicate preventively. At the start of World War II, the Soviet Union viewed Poland as attractive territory, to be conquered and potentially annexed after the war. The Katyn massacre was not discovered until 1943, by the Germans, who instantly blamed the Soviets. The latter, however, blamed the Germans, and the Western Allies begrudgingly accepted this untruthful claim. The Katyn Forest Massacre remained taboo for many years, and it has only attracted significant scholarly, historical and political interest in the last two decades, following the fall of the Iron Curtain. This Article seeks to decipher the Katyn myth by describing in Part II the events that led to the Katyn Forest Massacre as well as the killings themselves. In Part III, this Article focuses on subsequent investigations into Katyn, including the US. congressional inquiry in 1952, as well as post-Cold War revelations about Katyn, permitting to officially inflict responsibility on the Soviet Union. In Part IV, the Article examines the Katyn killings in light of international law, concludes that the killings constitute war crimes and, crimes against humanity, and that they may perhaps constitute genocide, under a more expansive reading of the Genocide Convention. Finally, Part V concludes that the admission of guilt by Russia about its role at Katyn is necessary and plays a crucial role in the thawing of Russian-Polish relations

The Applicability of the Humanitarian Intervention \u27Exception\u27 to the Middle Eastern Refugee Crisis: Why the International Community Should Intervene Against ISIS

The refugee crises in Iraq and Syria, which has been evolving over the past decade as a result of both ongoing conflict in these countries and the recent surge of Islamic State-led violence, has morphed into a true humanitarian catastrophe. Tens of thousands of refugees have been subjected to violence and have been dispersed and forced to live under dire conditions; such massive population flows have destabilized the entire region and have threatened the stability of neighboring countries. The United States and several other countries have been engaged in a military air strike campaign against the Islamic State, but the international community has otherwise not authorized a multilateral military action against the Islamic State in order to alleviate refugee and other humanitarian suffering. This Article argues that in light of such a tremendous humanitarian crisis, reflected in the current refugee crisis, international law authorizes states to intervene through the paradigm of humanitarian intervention. The Article argues that if international law embraces the concept of humanitarian intervention as an evolving norm of customary law, then this norm encompasses intervention in situations of a humanitarian refugee crisis, such as the one that has unfolded in Iraq and Syria

Clash of the Titans: Collisions of Economic Regulations and the Need to Harmonize Prescriptive Jurisdiction Rules

Part I of this article describes regulatory clashes involving different states\u27 public laws, and then focuses on certain areas of law, including antitrust, securities, and Internet commerce and publishing, where such clashes are most likely to take place. Part II focuses on the different solutions to this regulatory puzzle invoked by scholars, advocating either territorial-based or substance-based approaches. Part III then critiques the two approaches, while emphasizing the need to address the issue from a global perspective, that is, by seeking to harmonize jurisdiction-allocating rules on an international level