Suchergebnisse

Diplomatic assurances are promises which purport to manage the tension between the need for national security and the human rights obligations not to send individuals to countries where they would be at risk of torture. This article looks at how and why diplomatic assurances have become a part of policy efforts to make counterterrorism human rights compliant and as part of a wider strategy for drawing a line under the damaging legacy of the 'war on terror'. This positive gloss on the use of diplomatic assurances is, however, in contrast to the worries motivating human rights advocates which centre on the implications for the global anti-torture regime. Behind the doubts surrounding diplomatic assurances is a wider concern, centred on whether the past architects of the war on terror can be trusted to progressively develop the rules and norms governing this domain. (International Affairs (Oxford) / SWP)

AbstractWhat role does enforcement play in protecting the constitutional authority of international law? Can enforcement be understood as a specifically constitutional practice? I argue here that international law has a greater capacity for constitutional enforcement than sceptical accounts have tended to acknowledge. This argument is anchored in the institutional account of the authority of law offered by Hart and developed by MacCormick. This focuses on the official or administrative perceptions as the determinant of constitutional legitimacy, which offers a way to offset the scepticisms caused by gaps in the constitutional order. This establishes constitutional enforcement as a practice centred on and legitimated by the attribution of role responsibilities, rather than on the direct application or policing of the rules. I illustrate these arguments using the law of the sea, a domain where the functional difficulties of enforcement have always presented a challenge to international law's claim to authority.

AbstractThis article critically assesses the concept of the complementarity of means, a concept that underpins the 'holistic justice' turn in postconflict policy making. Our concern is with how global transitional justice strategies are being informed by a compelling but vague ideal of institutional cooperation. Drawing on research into Sierra Leone's 'two tracks' of transitional justice, we argue that political interaction between the two mechanisms and a contentious, ad hoc learning process between the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were crucial to the way the complementarity of means has come to underpin the holistic justice agenda. We caution that by treating the complementarity of means as a mechanical outcome of the mere existence of separate transitional justice mechanisms, global policy makers have drawn the wrong empirical lessons from Sierra Leone. Political engagement played a central role in constructing a pragmatic partnership between the competing institutions, and in accounting for some of the long‐term and unintended consequences of transitional justice. We argue that if a complementarity of means is to be effectively realized global policy makers need to embrace – rather than deny – the politics of holistic justice.