Universal jurisdiction also called the universality principle enables nations to prosecute offenders of certain crimes, even though they don’t have any nexus to the crime, the alleged offender and the victim. As a concept it was historically developed on the maritime legal principle of hostis humani generis (enemy of the humankind) to address the issue of piracy, which caused considerable destruction of international trade. However, today this principle is applied to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity. This principle also operates on the international concept of jus cogens which argues that certain obligations under international law are binding on all states and therefore they cannot be altered by a treaty. The Eichmann Trial and the Pinochet Case both have been very significant points in international legal history emphasizing the universality principle.
In the Eichmann trial, the judiciary in Israel set a substantial and contemporary precedent towards the advancement of universal jurisdiction. The court in a detailed verdict appealed to the idea of the natural law to find universal jurisdiction applied. The accused in this case, Adolf Eichmann was appointed to the Jewish Section of the “Security Services” (SS) in 1934 and later on became extremely involved in Hitler’s’ formulation and operation of the “Final Solution”. At the end of World War II, many top officials of the Nazi Party were tried at Nuremberg Trials. In 1950, Eichmann escaped to Argentina like many other members of the Nazi Party and lived there under assumed name and identity with his wife and children joining him two years later. A decade later in 1960, Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service learned of his presence in Argentina and in May that ye...
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...uman rights under international law". Houston Journal of International Law 5: 1–34.
See statements by Dr. Amadeo (Argentina), and Mrs. Meir (Israel), U.N. Doe. No. S/PV. 865, par. 24, at 5, and No. S/PV. 866, para. 41, at 9. http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-chile-90 State Immunity Act 1978, s.14(1)(a)
England School of Law, Winter 2001.
Ley Organica del Poder Judicial, art. 23(4) (1985).
Ibid.
Extradition Act 1989 [United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland], 1989 Chapter 33, 27 July 1989
Brody, Reed and Rather, Michael, red., The Pinochet Papers, 2000, p. 257-258
Brody, Reed and Rather, Michael, red., The Pinochet Papers, 2000, p. 127-180
Brody, Reed and Rather, Michael, red., The Pinochet Papers, 2000, p. 12
[1999] 2 WLR 272 [2000] 1 AC 119
Brody, Reed and Rather, Michael, red., The Pinochet Papers, 2000, p. 411-412
The Gestapo was an information gathering and law enforcing body of the Nazi regime, which began its operation in 1933. The organization has been examined though many lenses, some more popular than others. The article, “ The Gestapo and German Society” by Robert Gellately argues how ultimately it was society that fueled the Gestapo’s power beyond the limits of what they could have achieved without society’s help. Other perspectives into the analysis of the Gestapo have included the organizations legal history and insights into key leaders such as Henirich Himmler. What some of these other perspectives lack is a thorough assessment of the Gestapo’s operations. Gellately created a compelling argument by determining what led to a Gestapo case being initiated and the number of employees per branch compared to the population to conclude that the Gestapo lacked the physical resources to be the motor of the terror system within the Nazi regime. Yet, the author leaves room to argue that German society had adequate reason to fear the brutal behaviour of the Gestapo regardless of private citizen’s cooperation in cases.
The Nuremberg Trials was unethically run and violated the rights of the Nazi leaders who were convicted of committing crimes against humanity. Primarily because the Allies sought to use the trials as a way to remind the Germans, who won the war ‘again’. Thus making it similar to the Treaty of Versailles in (19- ), through implying this notion of “Victors’ Justice”. Nevertheless, the Allies did to an extent ‘try’ to make the tribunal as ethical as possible,
Adolf Eichmann was a high-ranking German officer who was one of a few top-ranking officials responsible for the "legal work" of the extermination of millions of Jews. He was a wanted Nazi war criminal because he escaped just before the end of World War II. He was not immediately captured and thus evaded the Nuremberg Trials as he fled to the country of Argentina where he attempted to fade into history. Israeli secret service agents somehow managed to track Eichmann down, kidnap him, and bring him back to Israel to face the consequences of his past. Throughout the trial, Eichmann's defense was simply that he was basically a puppet of Nazi Germany saying that he was "a tool in the hands of superior powers and authorities."
Adolf Eichmann was convicted of the mass killing of Jews in 1945. Eichmann murdered almost 11 million Jews, or almost a third of the world’s Jews. Einsatzgruppen was the name of the group that participated in the mass killings of the Je...
Reinhard Heydrich convenes the Wannsee Conference, presenting his plans to coordinate a European-wide “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” to key officials from Reich Ministries and the Nazi Party. Eichmann, who attends the conference and prepares Heydrich's briefing papers, will play a key role in the implementation of this “Final Solution.”
“The Holocaust is the most investigated crime in history, as has often been pointed out in response to deniers. Eichmann may be that crime’s most investigated criminal” (Sells, Michael A.). Adolf Eichmann was one of the head Nazis. He had a lot of authority in enacting what Hitler had told the Nazis to do. He was just about as responsible as Hitler was for killing all of those innocent
McKale, Donald M. Nazis after Hitler: how perpetrators of the Holocaust cheated justice and truth. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012. Print.
...es’ constitutions, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, according to Wright, “pressed for the acceptance of its rulings in Argentine courts” (166). Not only international efforts, but also domestic efforts, to apply international jurisprudence to local courts were on the rise. For example, in 1995, CELS launched its “program for the application of international law to human right in local courts” based on the amendments to the Argentine constitution (Wright 166). Just as well, human rights lawyers pushed “courts to embrace the international principle that crimes against humanity cannot be amnestied” (Wright, 167). In sum, the International human rights lobby wanted each country to mold its human rights jurisprudence around the rulings of international human rights law, and domestic actors adopted the same goal.
“Angel Of Death.”, The Holocaust Crimes, Heroes and villains, Louis Bülow Privacy, 2012-2014. 7 February, 2014.
Ordinary men have the capacity to commit extraordinary crimes and on April 11, 1961, Adolf Eichmann an ordinary looking man faced trial for the murder of five million Jews. Adolf Eichmann served in the Nazi party as their expert on Jewish matters. During the Nuremberg trials that took place years before Eichmann’s trial, many witnesses testified to the control Eichmann had over the implementation of the final solution. SS Captain Wisliceny worked under Eichmann in Hungary in 1944 and he proclaimed that Eichmann said, “he would jump into his grave laughing, because of the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience, gave him extraordinary satisfaction’” (48). Also, Eichmann worked with the members of Jewish councils, and they claimed in earlier trials that he had a direct hand in the “Jewish Question” (49). With a heavy list of witness accounts and facts to proof that Eichmann committed the crimes, he did not face his day in court till many years later and that appeared to be fine with most
The main focus of the post war testimony of Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess, Commandant at Auschwitz from May 1940 until December, 1943, is the mass extermination of Jews during World War II. His signed affidavit had a profound impact at the Post-War trials of Major War Criminals held at Nuremburg from November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946. His testimony is a primary source that details and describes his personal account of the timeline, who ordered Auschwitz to become a death camp, and the means used to execute and exterminate millions of Jews. Obtained while tortured nearly to death under British custody, the authenticity and reliability of this document is questioned due to arguable inconsistencies that exist. However, the events sworn to in his testimony have been recounted and corroborated by witnesses and thousands of survivors.
"The Nuremberg Laws: Background & Overview." Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. .
According to Article 38 of the 1946 Statute of the International Court of Justice, the Court shall apply “international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law” in its decisions (Kritsiotis 123). In other words, the International Court of Justice cites customs as a formal source of law. According to Roberto Unger, author of Law in a Modern Society, customary international law is best defined as “any recurring mode of interaction among individuals and groups, together with the more or less explicit acknowledgement of these groups and individuals that such patterns of interaction produce reciprocal expectations of conduct that out to be satisfied (Shaw 72-73). In other words, customary international laws are primarily concerned with how and why sates behave in a particular manner. Customs derive from the behavior of states (state practice) and the subconscious belief that a behavior is inherently legal (opinio juris). Evidence of state behavior is documented in the decisions of domestic courts, international courts, and international organizations. Unlike treaty law, customary laws are binding on all states. Additionally, if a treaty derives from a custom it is also binding on all states. Some of the international court cases that have been instrumental in the development of customary international law include the Nicaragua v. United States case, the Anglo-Norwegian Fisheries case, the Scotia case, the Asylum case, the Paquete Habana case, and the Lotus case.
“The four chief prosecutors of the International Military Tribunal (IMT)—Robert H. Jackson (United States), Francois de Menthon (France), Roman A. Rudenko (Soviet Union), and Sir Hartley Shawcross (Great Britain)—hand down indictments against 24 leading Nazi officials,” (“The Nuremberg Trials”). Alongside the judges stood A prosecutorial staff of over 600 Americans plus additional hundreds from the other three powers assembled and began interviewing potential witnesses and identifying documents from among the 100,000 captured for the prosecution case,” (Doug Linder). This was a time in history that really brought together the great nations and made them what they are
To begin with, the relevant principle of jurisdiction should be examined in order to assess the validity of the extradition request. According to Glahn and Taulbee (2013), “principle of jurisdiction refers to the allocation of legal competence to regulate certain categories of persons, events, and things within a state and among various levels and institutions of government.” (p. 233). The definition implies that there should be an effective link connecting the state claiming jurisdiction and the event that took place. Currently, there are five principles of jurisdiction recognized by the international practice: territory, nationality or active personality, protective personality, passive personality, and universality (Glahn and Taulbee, p. 235). ...