Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-sjtt6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T17:13:08.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Difference Law Makes: Domestic Atrocity Laws and Human Rights Prosecutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Mark S. Berlin  and
Geoff Dancy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article offers the first systematic analysis of the effects of domestic atrocity laws on human rights prosecutions. Scholars have identified various political and sociological factors to explain the striking rise in human rights prosecutions over the past 30 years, yet the role of domestic criminal law in enabling such prosecutions has largely been unexamined. That is surprising given that international legal prohibitions against human rights atrocities are designed to be enforced by domestic courts applying domestic criminal law. We argue that domestic criminal laws against genocide and crimes against humanity facilitate human rights prosecutions in post-authoritarian states by helping to overcome formal legal roadblocks to prosecution, such as retroactivity, amnesties, immunities, and statutes of limitations. Using original data on domestic atrocity laws and human rights prosecutions in new democracies, we find that atrocity laws increase the speed with which new democracies pursue prosecutions, as well as the overall numbers of trials they initiate and complete.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 533 - 566
Copyright
© 2017 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, whose comments and suggestions helped improve this article.

References

References

Acemoglu, Darren & Robinson, James (2006) Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Akande, Dapo & Shah, Sangeeta (2010) “Immunities of State Officials, International Crimes, and Foreign Domestic Courts,” 21 European J. of International Law 815–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alfonsín, Raúl (1993) “Never Again’ in Argentina,” 4 J. of Democracy 15–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appel, Benjamin J. & Loyle, Cyanne E. (2012) “The Economic Benefits of Justice: Post-Conflict Justice and Foreign Direct Investment,” 49 J. of Peace Research 685–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakker, Christine A. E. (2005) “A Full Stop to Amnesty in Argentina: The Simón Case,” 3 J. of International Criminal Justice 1106–20.10.1093/jicj/mqi078CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bassiouni, M. Cherif (1983) “The Penal Characteristics of Conventional International Criminal Law,” 15 Case Western Reserve J. of International Law 27–37.Google Scholar
Beck, Nathaniel, Jonathan N. Katz, & Richard Tucker (1998) “Taking Time Seriously: Time-Series-Cross-Section Analysis with a Binary Dependent Variable,” 42 American J. of Political Science 1260–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlin, Mark S. (2013) “From Pirates to Pinochet: Universal Jurisdiction for Torture,” in Brysk, A., ed., The Politics of the Globalization of Law: Getting from Rights to Justice. New York: Routledge. 83–106.Google Scholar
Berlin, Mark S. (2015) “Implementing International Law: The Criminalization of Atrocities in Domestic Legal Systems since World War II.” PhD Dissertation, Univ. of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Betts, Alexander & Orchard, Phil (2014) Implementation and World Politics: How International Norms Change Practice. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackwell, Matthew, et al. (2009) “CEM: Coarsened Exact Matching in Stata,” 9 The Stata J. 524–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M. & Jones, Bradford S. (2004) Event History Modeling: A Guide for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brinks, Daniel M. (2007) “The Legal Complex and the Response to Police Violence in South America,” in Halliday, T. C., Lucien Karpik, & Malcolm M. Feeley, eds., Fighting for Political Freedom: Comparative Studies of the Legal Complex and Political Liberalism. Oxford: Hart Publishing. 281–314.Google Scholar
Burt, Jo-Marie (2009) “Guilty as Charged: The Trial of Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori for Human Rights Violations,” 3 International J. of Transitional Justice 384–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burt, Jo-Marie (2013) “The New Accountability Agenda in Latin America: The Promise and Perils of Human Rights Prosecutions,” in Hite, K. & Ungar, M., eds., Sustaining Human Rights in the Twenty-First Century: Strategies for Latin America. Baltimore and Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 101–41.Google Scholar
Burt, Jo-Marie & Lessa, Francesca (2013) “Recent Sentence by Uruguayan Supreme Court Obstructs Search for Truth and Justice,” Washington Office on Latin America. Available at: https://www.wola.org/analysis/recent-sentence-by-uruguayan-supreme-court-obstructs-search-for-truth-and-justice/ (accessed 7 June 2017).Google Scholar
Carter, David B. & Signorino, Curtis S. (2010) “Back to the Future: Modeling Time Dependence in Binary Data,” 18 Political Analysis 271–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Adam S. & Versteeg, Mila (2015) “The Failure of Constitutional Torture Prohibitions,” 44 The J. of Legal Studies 417–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Cath (2010) Post-Transitional Justice: Human Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador. University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Dancy, Geoff & Michel, Verónica (2016) “Human Rights Enforcement From Below: Private Actors and Prosecutorial Momentum in Latin America and Europe,” 60 International Studies Q. 173–88.Google Scholar
Dancy, Geoff & Sikkink, Kathryn (2011) “Ratification and Human Rights Prosecutions: Toward a Transnational Theory of Treaty Compliance,” 44 New York Univ. J. of International Law and Politics 751–90.Google Scholar
Davis, Jeffrey (2014) Seeking Human Rights Justice in Latin America. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Drumbl, Mark A. (2007) Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El Zeidy, Mohamed M. (2008) The Principle of Complementarity in International Criminal Law Origin, Development, and Practice. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elster, Jon (2004) “Moral Dilemmas of Transitional Justice,” in Baumann, P. & Betzler, M., eds., Practical Conflicts: New Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 295–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fariss, Christopher J. (2014) “Respect for Human Rights Has Improved Over Time: Modeling the Changing Standard of Accountability,” 108 American Political Science Rev. 297–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferdinandusse, Ward N. (2006) Direct Application of International Criminal Law in National Courts. Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Hazel (2002) The Law of State Immunity. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Franklin, Jonathan (2006) “Chilean Government Rejects State Funeral for Pinochet as Thousands Queue to Pay Respects,” the Guardian, May 12, 2016. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/12/chile.topstories3 (7 June 2017).Google Scholar
Goemans, Henk E., Skrede Gleditsch, Kristian, & Chiozza, Giacomo (2009) “Introducing Archigos: A Data Set of Political Leaders,” 46 J. of Peace Research 269–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gready, Paul (2010) The Era of Transitional Justice. Boulder: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M. & Ron, James (2013) “The Latin Bias: Regions, the Anglo-American Media, and Human Rights,” 57 International Studies Q. 474–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hathaway, Oona A. (2007) “Why Do Countries Commit to Human Rights Treaties?,” 51 J. of Conflict Resolution 588–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hilbink, Lisa (2007) Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hilbink, Lisa (2012) “The Origins of Positive Judicial Independence,” 64 World Politics 587–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hristov, Hristo & Kashumov, Alexander (2012) “Justice and Accountability Mechanisms in Bulgaria in the Transition Period (1989–2008),” in Popovski, V. & Serrano, M., eds., After Oppression: Transitional Justice in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Tokyo: United Nations Univ. Press. 273–97.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel (1991) The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: Univ. of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Iacus, Stefano M., King, Gary, & Porro, Giuseppe (2012) “Causal Inference Without Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching,” 20 Political Analysis 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalb, Johanna (2013) “The Judicial Role in New Democracies: A Strategic Account of Comparative Citation,” 38 Yale J. of International Law 423–66.Google Scholar
Kapiszewski, Diana (2011) “Tactical Balancing: High Court Decision Making on Politically Crucial Cases,” 45 Law & Society Rev. 471–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keith, Linda Camp, C. Neal Tate, & Steven C. Poe (2009) “Is The Law a Mere Parchment Barrier to Human Rights Abuse?,” 71 The J. of Politics 644–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Hun Joon (2008) “Expansion of Transitional Justice Measures: A Comparative Analysis of Its Causes,” PhD Dissertation, Univ. of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Kim, Hun Joon (2012) “Structural Determinants of Human Rights Prosecutions after Democratic Transition,” 49 J. of Peace Research. 305–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Hun Joon & Sikkink, Kathryn (2010) “Explaining the Deterrence Effect of Human Rights Prosecutions for Transitional Countries,” 54 International Studies Q. 939–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreicker, Helmut (2005) “National Prosecution of Genocide from a Comparative Perspective,” 53 International Criminal Law Rev. 313–28.Google Scholar
Kreutz, Joakim (2010) “How and When Armed Conflicts End: Introducing the UCDP Conflict Termination Dataset,” 47 J. of Peace Research 243–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lake, Milli (2014) “Organizing Hypocrisy: Providing Legal Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Areas of Limited Statehood,” 58 International Studies Q. 515–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linzer, Drew A. & Staton, Jeffrey K. (2015) “A Global Measure of Judicial Independence, 1948–2012,” 3 J. of Law and Courts 223–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupu, Yonatan (2013) “The Informative Power of Treaty Commitment: Using the Spatial Model to Address Selection Effects,” 57 American J. of Political Science 912–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahoney, James & Thelen, Kathleen (2010) “A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change,” in Mahoney, J. & Thelen, K., eds., Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. 1–37.Google Scholar
Mallinder, Louise (2011) “Amnesties,” in Schabas, W. A. & Bernaz, N., eds., Routledge Handbook of International Criminal Law. London: Routledge. 419–434.Google Scholar
Marshall, Monty G., et al. (2013) Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2010: Data User's Manual. Available at http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/p4manualv2015.pdf (accessed 7 June 2017).Google Scholar
McCann, Michael (2006) “Law and Social Movements: Contemporary Perspectives,” 2 Annual Rev. of Law and Social Science 17–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michel, Verónica & Sikkink, Kathryn (2013) “Human Rights Prosecutions and the Participation Rights of Victims in Latin America,” 47 Law & Society Rev. 873–907.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michel-Luviano, Verónica (2012) “Access to Justice, Victims’ Rights, and Private Prosecution in Latin America: The Cases of Chile, Guatemala, and Mexico,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Univ. of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Sara McLaughlin, Jonathan J. Ring, & Mary K. Spellman (2013) “Domestic Legal Traditions and States’ Human Rights Practices,” 50 J. of Peace Research 189–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moustafa, Tamir (2007) The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law, Politics, and Economic Development in Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mydans, Seth “Coup Crushed in Philippines: In a Two-Crisis Week, Aquino Shows Her Nerve,” The New York Times, Aug. 30, 1987.Google Scholar
Nagy, Rosemary (2008) “Transitional Justice as Global Project: Critical Reflections,” 29 Third World Q. 275–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass C. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass C. & Weingast, Barry R. (1989) “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” 49 The J. of Economic History 803–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ocantos, Ezequiel González (2014) “Persuade Them or Oust Them: Crafting Judicial Change and Transitional Justice in Argentina,” 4 Comparative Politics. 479–98.Google Scholar
Olsen, Tricia D., Leigh A. Payne, & Andrew G. Reiter (2010) Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace.Google Scholar
Payne, Leigh A., Francesca Lessa, & Gabriel Pereira (2015) “Overcoming Barriers to Justice in the Age of Human Rights Accountability,” 37 Human Rights Q. 728–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettersson, Therése & Wallensteen, Peter (2015) “Armed Conflicts, 1946–2014,” 52 J. of Peace Research 536–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, Eric A. & Vermeule, Adrian (2004) “Transitional Justice as Ordinary Justice,” 117 Harvard Law Rev. 761–825.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Walter W., & Paul J., DiMaggio, eds. (1991) The New Institutionalism in Organization Analysis. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quigley, John B. (2006) The Genocide Convention: An International Law Analysis. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.Google Scholar
Raimondo, Fabián (2011) “Overcoming Domestic Legal Impediments to the Investigation and Prosecution of Human Rights Violations: The Case of Argentina,” 18 Human Rights Brief 15–20.Google Scholar
Roht-Arriaza, Naomi (2015) “After Amnesties Are Gone: Latin American National Courts and the New Contours of the Fight Against Impunity,” 37 Human Rights Q. 341–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schabas, William A. (2009) Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schroeder, Michael Bluman, & Tiemessen, Alana (2014) “Transnational Advocacy and Accountability: From Declarations of Anti-Impunity to Implementing the Rome Statute,” in Betts, A. & Orchard, P., eds., Implementation and World Politics: How International Norms Change Practice. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. 50–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sikkink, Kathryn (2011) The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Simmons, Beth & Elkins, Zachary (2004) “The Globalization of Liberalization: Policy Diffusion in the International Political Economy,” 98 American Political Science Rev. 171–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tang, Yi Shin (2015) “International Justice through Domestic Courts: Challenges in Brazil's Judicial Review of the Amnesty Law,” 9 International J. of Transitional Justice 259–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teitel, Ruti G. (2000) Transitional Justice. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Thelen, Kathleen (1999) “Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics,” 2 Annual Rev. of Political Science 369–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Union of International Associations (1967–2015) Yearbook of International Organizations. Munich: K.G. Saur Verlag.Google Scholar
Wexler, Leila Sadat (1994) “The Interpretation of the Nuremberg Principles by the French Court of Cassation: From Touvier to Barbie and Back Again,” 32 Columbia J. of Transnational Law 289–380.Google Scholar
Yoo, Eun-hye & Boyle, Elizabeth Heger (2015) “National Human Trafficking Initiatives: Dimensions of Policy Diffusion,” 40 Law & Social Inquiry 631–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Cases Cited

Barrios Altos v. Peru (Inter-American Court of Human Rights 2001) Judgment.Google Scholar
The Prosecutor v. Morris Kallon, Brima Bazzy Kamara: Decision on Challenge to Jurisdiction: Lomé Accord Amnesty (Special Court for Sierra Leone 2004).Google Scholar
R v. Bow Street Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Pinochet Ugarte (No. 3) 2 W.L.R. 827 (1999).Google Scholar
The Prosecutor v. Michel Bagaragaza (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda 2006) Decision on the Prosecution Motion for Referral to the Kingdom of Norway.Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

East Germany (1968) Strafgesetzbuch Der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik.Google Scholar
Council of Europe (1974) European Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes. ETS No. 082. Código Penal de Guatemala.Google Scholar
Guatemala (1973) Código Penal de Guatemala.Google Scholar
United Nations (1948) Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 78 U.N.T.S. 277.Google Scholar
United Nations (1968) Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. 754 U.N.T.S. 73.Google Scholar
United Nations (1984) Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. 1465 U.N.T.S. 85.Google Scholar
United Nations (1998) Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. 2187 U.N.T.S. 90.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Berlin and Dancy supplementary material
Download undefined(File)
File 166.3 KB