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Judging Aggression Florida International University College of Law eCollections Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship 2011 Judging Aggression Noah Weisbord Florida International University College of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/faculty_publications Part of the Courts Commons, Criminal Law Commons, International Law Commons, and the Transnational Law Commons Recommended Citation Noah Weisbord, Judging Aggression , 50 Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 82 (2011). Available at: https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/faculty_publications/146 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at eCollections. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCollections. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +(,121/,1( Citation: 50 Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 82 2011-2012 Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline (http://heinonline.org) Thu Jul 16 10:06:49 2015 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: https://www.copyright.com/ccc/basicSearch.do? &operation=go&searchType=0 &lastSearch=simple&all=on&titleOrStdNo=0010-1931 Judging Aggression NOAH WEISBORD* One of the most polarizing debates in international law is how the goal of peace should figure into the work of internationalcriminal tribunals. The freshly minted crime of aggression lands the judges of the In- ternational Criminal Court in the middle of the peace versus justice dilemma and will challenge the court to prove its value for advancing peace in appropriate circumstances while building the rule of law and maintaining its legitimacy. This Article, the final in- stallment in the author's trilogy on the crime of ag- gression, explores the gaps, ambiguities and contra- dictions woven into the definition of the crime and evaluates the range of ways in which well-intentioned internationaljudges might attempt to do justice while promoting peace through decisional law focusing on three of internationallaw s' most controversial ques- tions: the scope of self-defense, the status of humani- tarian intervention under the UN Charter and the character of an armed attack. Ultimately, this Article argues for a richer understanding of the concepts of peace andjustice that will permit internationaljudges to punish aggressionwhile promotingpeace. * Assistant Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law; S.J.D., LL.M. program, Harvard Law School; B.Sc., B.S.W., LL.B., B.C.L., M.S.W., McGill University. The author was an independent expert delegate on the Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression and at the ICC Review Conference. He would like to thank Martha Minow, Benjamin Ferencz, Alana Klein, Payam Akhavan, Donald Ferencz, the International Criminal Court Student Network at Duke Law School (Drew Kostic, Meaghan Krupa, Emily Randall, Stephanie Richards, Tati Sainati and Saleena Siraj) and the members of the Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression for their ideas and suggestions. Thanks to Katherine Maxwell for her research and to Marisol Floren for her assistance at the FILU College of Law Library. 20111 JUDGINGAGGRESSION IN TRO D U CTIO N ................................................................................... 84 1. THE KAMPALA OUTCOME ...................................................... 88 A . The D efinition ............................................................. 89 B . Jurisdiction .................................................................. 93 C. Entry into Force .......................................................... 97 D. Key Zones of Interpretation ......................................... 99 1. Jurisdiction and Admissibility ............................... 99 a. Interpreting the Security Council Determination ................................................. 99 b. Where the Act of Aggression Took Place ......... 101 c. Complem entarity ............................................... 102 d. The Interests of Justice ...................................... 103 2. The Act of Aggression .............................................. 103 a. A Manifest Violation of the UN Charter ........... 104 b. The Acts That Qualify as Aggression ................ 104 3. The Culpable Conduct Linking the Individual to the C ollective A ct ..................................................... 105 a. Determining Who Counts as a Leader ............... 105 b. Deciding What Behavior Falls within the Actus Reus of the Crime .................................... 106 c. Establishing the Scope of the Joint Criminal E nterprise ........................................................... 106 d. Settling on the Forms of Perpetration and Participation That Matter in the Context of an A ggression C ase ................................................ 107 E. Methodological Considerations: Legality and Judicial Interpretation .................................................... 107 II. WHEN PEACE AND JUSTICE CLASH ......................................... 109 A. The Proponents of International Justice ......................... 110 B. The Proponents of Negotiated Peace ............................. 112 C. A Broader Concept of Justice ........................................ 114 D. Envisaging a Broader Concept of Peace ........................ 116 E. Judicial Considerations .................................................. 120 F. The Peace Versus Justice Dilemma in an Aggression C ase ................................................................................ 12 7 1. Prosecution of Aggression as a Hurdle to a N egotiated Solution .................................................. 128 COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW [50:82 2. Overlapping Domestic and International Responses ................................................................. 130 3. Reprisals Against Civilians ...................................... 131 4. The ICC's Long-Term Efficacy ............................... 132 11 . H A RD CA SES ........................................................................... 134 A . The Scope of Self-Defense ............................................ 134 1. A Blanket Prohibition on the Use of Force? ...... ...... 136 2. Temporal Dimensions of the Self-Defense E xception .................................................................. 140 3. Alternatives to the CarolineTest ............................. 146 B. The Character of an Armed Attack ................................ 149 1. Interpreting the Armed Attack in Light of GA Resolution 3314 (1974) ............................................ 153 2. Expanding the List of Acts of Aggression by A nalogy .................................................................... 154 3. A Broad Reading of Armed Attack .......................... 155 C. The Legal Status of Humanitarian Intervention ............ 156 1. Humanitarian Intervention as Collective Self- D efen se ..................................................................... 160 2. M itigation ................................................................. 162 3. The Manifest Qualifier in the Definition of A ggression ................................................................ 164 C ON CLU SION .................................................................................... 167 INTRODUCTION Two of the foremost controversies within the field of interna- tional criminal law are on a collision course: the definition of the crime of aggression and the peace versus justice dilemma. When these controversies collide, the judges of the International Criminal Court ("ICC") will be expected to mediate the impact. Punishing ag- gression while promoting peace will be a herculean task if ever there was one. In June 2010, in Kampala, the Assembly of States Parties ("ASP") to the ICC successfully negotiated a consensus definition of the crime of aggression as well as jurisdictional conditions and a 20111 JUDGINGAGGRESSION mechanism for the amendments to the ICC Statute to enter into force.1 These amendments will give the ICC jurisdiction to prosecute political and military leaders of states for planning, preparing, initiat- ing or executing illegal wars. The elements of an illegal war and the doctrinal link that will allow a judge to attribute it to an individual are circumscribed by the definition of the crime. The Kampala outcome is the culmination of approximately seventy years of on-and-off multilateral negotiations that gained momentum after the Cold War.2 The ICC and the crime of aggres- sion are legacies of the Nuremberg Trials whose evolution was ob- structed by the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. 3 Both court and crime became live issues again in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War.4 The ICC Statute was created in 1998, and the crime of aggression, the most contentious topic at the diplo- matic conference establishing it, was included alongside genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, but left undefined. 5 The 1998 diplomatic conference in Rome (the "Rome Conference") in- stead assigned a Preparatory Commission ("PrepCom") 6 to draft pro- posals to be considered at a future Review Conference, to be con- vened no earlier than seven years after the entry into force of the Rome
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