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The Edge of Law explores the spatial implications of establishing a new legal institution in the wake of violent conflict. Using the example of the establishment of the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alex Jeffrey argues that legal processes constantly demarcate a line of inclusion and exclusion: materially, territorially and corporally. In contrast to accounts that have focused on the judicial outcomes of these transitional justice efforts, The Edge of Law draws on long-term fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina to focus on the social and political consequences of the trials, tracing the fraught mechanisms that have been used by international and local political elites to convey their legitimacy. This book will be of interest to socio-legal and geographical scholars working in the fields of transitional justice, legal systems, critical geopolitics and criminology.

Large bodies of research examine why states construct and ratify international legal agreements, yet little research has investigated the conditions under which states are likely to go further and legislate international legal norms into their domestic laws. The question is important, because the creation and ratification of treaties are often not enough for them to work as they are designed to – the enforcement of international law today increasingly depends on states enacting domestic implementing legislation that incorporates international legal rules into their domestic laws. To investigate why they do so, I examine the conditions under which states worldwide have legislated one set of international legal norms into their domestic laws: criminal prohibitions against genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity – also known collectively as "atrocity crimes." Drawing on research on norm diffusion and professional communities in policymaking, I propose a new theory to explain the spread of these laws. In brief, I argue that the adoption of domestic anti-atrocity laws around the globe since World War II has largely been the result of choices made by technocratic legal experts who were appointed by governments to lead national criminal code reform projects. Though implementing international law has not motivated governments to initiate such reforms in the first place, legal experts have nonetheless used their delegated authority to codify norms – like anti-atrocity laws – that they believed embodied how a "modern" criminal code should look. To test this theory, I use a multi-method research design. First, using time-series statistical methods and an original dataset I constructed documenting the existence and timing of national criminal laws against genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in every country in the world that has adopted them since World War II, I find strong support for my hypothesis that states that undertake wholesale reforms of their national criminal codes are more likely to adopt national anti-atrocity laws. Second, drawing on interviews and archival research in the field, I conduct an in-depth case study of a particularly puzzling case of atrocity criminalization – Guatemala in 1973 – and find strong support for the causal mechanisms I theorize to be underlying these statistical correlations.

AUGUSTO PINOCHET, LEADER OF THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT THAT RULED CHILE BETWEEN 1973 AND 1990, WAS PLACED UNDER ARREST IN ENGLAND ON 16 OCTOBER 1998. THE CHARGES AGAINST HIM, AS ORIGINALLY FORMULATED BY THE SPANISH COURTS, ALLEGE VIOLATIONS OF THE MOST SERIOUS OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMES: GENOCIDE, TERRORISM, TORTURE, AND THE VARIOUS CRIMES THAT CONSTITUTE THE PRACTICE OF FORCED DISAPPEARANCE. AFTER PROTRACTED PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS IN THE BRITISH COURTS DEALING WITH IMMUNITY AND THE SCOPE OF THE EXTRADITION INQUIRY, HE FACES EXTRADITION AND TRIAL IN SPAIN FOR TORTURE AND CONSPIRACY TO TORTURE.

"With a unique transitional justice perspective on the Arab Spring, this book assesses the relocation of transitional justice from the international paradigm to Islamic legal systems. The Arab uprisings and new and old conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa and other contexts where Islam is a prominent religion have sparked an interest in localising transitional justice in the legal systems of Muslim-majority communities to uncover the truth about past abuse and ensure accountability for widespread human rights violations. This raises pressing questions around how the international paradigm of transitional justice, and in particular its truth-seeking aims, might be implemented and adapted to local settings characterised by Muslim majority populations, and at the same time drawing from relevant norms and principles of Islamic law. This book offers a critical analysis of the relocation of transitional justice from the international paradigm to the legal systems of Muslim-majority societies in light of the inherently pluralistic realities of these contexts. It also investigates synergies between international law and Islamic law in furthering truth-seeking, the formation of collective memories and the victims' right to know the truth, as key aims of the international paradigm of transitional justice and broadly supported by the shari'ah. This book will be a useful reference for scholars, practitioners and policymakers seeking to better understand the normative underpinnings of (potential) transitional truth-seeking initiatives in the legal systems of Muslim-majority societies. At the same time, it also proposes a more critical and creative way of thinking about the challenges and opportunities of localising transitional justice in contexts where the principles and ideas of Islamic law carry different meanings"--

The doctoral thesis is dealing with the phenomenon of economic crime in the context of Nepal, i.e. a developing country situated between two big emerging States, China and India. The study starts by explaining objectives and methods of the work, then it gives a short overview about the actual social, economic and political situation of Nepal. Chapter 3 concentrates on the definitions of "economic crime" and describes seven different types, starting with corruption and ending with money laundering. The explanation of these various types is completed by sketching the relevant working agencies the task of which is to fight against specific crimes. In the next chapter, the author at first shows the structure of the Nepali legal order and organisation, before he is looking at various laws/acts relating to economic crime. At the end of chapter 4, he is trying to compare those laws and to assess their stringency and efficiency. Chapter 5 deals more detailledly with relevant working agencies and is structured similar to the previous one, i.e. it explains the organisation, task and powers of each agency as well as their cooperation and, at the end, it tries to assess common features, parallels as well as divergencies between them. Chapter 6 is based upon field studies of the author. On the one hand, it shows the results from questionnaires which were handed out to a lot of persons in Nepal and which might give a rather broad impression about various aspects of economic crime in this country. On the other hand, a very prominent case (Governor and Director of Nepal Rastra Bank) is looked at more intensively, and the author has scanned important original documents in order to give a clear account of its main features. At last, by summing up theoretical, normative and empirical components the author has been caused to deliver some proposals of his own for remedies relating to economic crime, in particular concerning improvements of control mechanisms and establishing a single working agency with different departments for the fight against economic crime. ; Die rechtswissenschaftliche Dissertation befasst sich mit dem Phänomen von "economic crime" (Wirtschaftsstraftaten) im Kontext Nepals, d.h. eines Entwicklungslandes, das zwischen zwei großen Schwellenländern, China und Indien, gelegen ist. Die Untersuchung beginnt mit einer Erläuterung von Zielen und Methoden der Arbeit und gibt dann einen kurzen Überblick über die gegenwärtige gesellschaftliche, wirtschaftliche und politische Lage Nepals. Kap. 3 widmet sich den Definitionen von "economic crime" und beschreibt sieben unterschiedliche Typen, von Korruption bis Geldwäsche. Die Darstellung dieser verschiedenen Typen wird ergäzt durch einen Blick auf die zuständigen staatlichen Stellen, die mit dem Kampf gegen "economic crime" befasst sind. Im nächsten Kapitel zeigt der Verfasser zunächst die Struktur der Rechtsordnung und Staatsorganisation Nepals auf, bevor er sich zahlreichen Rechtsvorschriften bezüglich "economic crime" zuwendet. Am Schluss des 4. Kapitels ist er bestrebt, diese Vorschriften zu vergleichen und ihre Stringenz und Effizienz zu würdigen. Kap. 5 befasst sich ausführlicher mit den zuständigen (Verwaltungs-) Stellen und ist ähnlich aufgebaut wie das vorherige, d.h. es erläutert Aufbau, Aufgabe und Befugnisse jeder Stelle sowie deren Zusammenarbeit und versucht schließlich, Gemeinsamkeiten, Parallelen und Unterschiede zu verdeutlichen. Kap. 6 stützt sich auf Feldstudien des Verfassers. Einerseits zeigt es die Ergebnisse einer Erhebung per Fragebogen auf, den eine Vielzahl von Personen in Nepal erhielten und ausfüllten und durch den wichtige Eindrücke über verschiedene Aspekte von "economic crime" in diesem Land vermittelt werden. Andererseits wird ein überaus prominenter Fall (Gouverneur und Direktor der Nepal Rastra Bank) eigehender erörtert und der Verfasser gibt im Text wichtige Originaldokumente wieder, um die wesentlichen Züge dieses Vorfalls deutlich zu machen. Abschließend stützt sich der Verfasser auf theoretische, normative und empirische Erkenntnisse zur Unterbreitung eigener Vorschläge für Maßnahmen ("remedies") gegen "economic crime", vor allem im Hinblick auf eine Verbesserung der Überwachung und des Vollzugs sowie der Errichtung einer einzigen zuständigen Behörde mit mehreren Abteilungen zum Kampf gegen Wirtschaftsstraftaten.