Part A Major Problems of International Criminal Justice, I How to Face International Crimes, Alternatives to International Criminal Justice »
José E. Alvarez
From: The Oxford Companion to International Criminal Justice
Edited By: Antonio Cassese (Editor-in-Chief)
For most of recorded history, the response to what today we would call ‘international crime’, including mass atrocities, has been to avoid the mechanisms of international criminal justice. There was, after all, a gap of nearly 500 years between the first known internationalized war crimes prosecution and the second, at Nuremberg after World War II (see Nuremberg IMT), and nearly half a century before another comparable attempt, through the ICTY and the ICTR. Today, despite the turn to a motley collection of internationalized criminal courts, it remains probable...
Part 3 Interpretation and Change, 11 Limits of Change by Way of Subsequent Agreements and Practice »
José E Alvarez
From: Treaties and Subsequent Practice
Edited By: Georg Nolte
Much as I would like to express disagreement with Gerhard Hafner and generate some illuminating discordance into this discussion, I substantially agree with his chapter and his presentation of it. I largely agree with the premise that the traditional rules for treaty interpretation contained in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties are malleable tools that can be made to apply to every treaty—from institutional charter to bilateral ‘contractual’ arrangement. The application of arts 31 and 32 VCLT can usually lead treaty interpreters to the conclusions that...
Part I Mapping International Adjudicative Bodies, Ch.8 What are International Judges for? The Main Functions of International Adjudication »
José E Alvarez
From: The Oxford Handbook of International Adjudication
Edited By: Cesare PR Romano, Karen Alter, Yuval Shany
International judges and arbitrators are commonly portrayed in simple terms: they are interstate dispute settlers engaged in avoiding or deterring threats to peace. This is suggested by the United Nations Charter,1 other treaties,2 and scholarship across time.3 The intertwined functions of settling disputes and maintaining peace, self-evident to those at the turn of the nineteenth century, continue to explain the function of today’s diverse courts and tribunals. Those functions are clearly engaged when International Court of Justice (ICJ) judges settle territorial...
