Introductory note to Yong Vui Kong v Public Prosecutor (Sing.ct.app)

On March 4, 2015, Singapore’s Court of Appeal issued its judgment in Yong Vui Kong v. Public Prosecutor, upholding the punishment of caning imposed on the defendant as constitutional. The decision is significant because it discusses the impact of the prohibition of torture, a peremptory norm of international law, on domestic legislation. The Court of Appeal determined that, even if caning were to be considered a form of torture, the customary international law prohibition on torture did not invalidate its domestic law permitting caning as a form of punishment.</jats:p

The International Criminal Court’s Chambers Practice Manual

This article discusses the nature of the International Criminal Court’s Chambers Practice Manual as an interpretative source, in the context of a wider debate on judges as procedural lawmakers in international criminal law. As is clear from the ICC Statute, the Practice Manual should not be seen as a source of law on a par with the Statute or Rules of Procedure and Evidence, nor even does it represent a secondary source of law. However, this article argues that the Practice Manual oversteps the mark of what could be expected from a guidance document containing merely non-binding recommendations in two important respects. First, as expressly acknowledged by the ICC’s President, the judges have perceived the amendment of the Practice Manual as an alternative to proposing amendments to the Court’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence to the Assembly of States Parties, a practice which has been fraught with difficulty in recent years. Second, the Practice Manual contains explicit instructions to Chambers, including text to be included in Chambers’ decisions, which appears to cross the boundaries of what should be expected from a guidance document. This article further argues that some early decisions of the Court following its adoption give the Practice Manual a normative force that ought not to attach to it. This raises issues of fairness, legal certainty, predictability and coherence, and overall, it is argued that the Practice Manual marks an unforeseen return to judicial law making in international criminal procedure

Open Source Information’s Blind Spot

Digital open source information has been heralded for its democratizing potential, insofar as it allows access to a much broader range of sources and voices than would normally be consulted through traditional methods of information gathering for international criminal investigations. It also helps to overcome some of the physical access barriers that are commonplace in international criminal investigations. At a time when the use of digital open source information is becoming more widespread, this article warns of the cognitive and technical biases that can impact upon two key stages of an investigation: finding relevant information and analysing that information. At the information-gathering stage, there are particular crimes, regions, and groups of people whose experiences are more likely to be overlooked or hidden in digital open source investigations. When it comes to analysing digital open source information, there is a danger that cognitive and technical biases may influence which information is deemed most relevant and useful to an international criminal investigation, and how that information is interpreted. This article proposes some steps that can be taken to mitigate these risks

The Role of Legal Education, Regulation, and Government in Protecting Access to Justice

In this paper, we argue that legal education, regulation and government each have an important role to play in protecting access to justice. We examine the place of law school initiatives in promoting access to justice, and how attitudinal approaches within legal education can have a lasting and very real impact on litigants’ access to justice mechanisms. We also discuss how regulation, including the so-called ‘cab rank rule’ can promote access to justice, as well as the role of governmental policies on individuals’ abilities to vindicate their rights and/or resolve disputes through proper legal remedies