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Lawfare and War Crimes Tribunals (Part 1)

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Date and time
Friday, September 10, 2010

This program is the first major academic symposia dedicated to exploring the concept of “Lawfare.” Traditionally “Lawfare” was defined as “a strategy of using—or misusing—law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective.” But lately, commentators and governments have applied the concept to International Criminal Tribunals, the defense counsel’s tactics challenging the detention of al Qaeda suspects in Guantanamo Bay and, as indicated in the quote above, to the controversial Goldstone Commission Report. This Conference and Experts Meeting, features two-dozen leading academics, practitioners, and former government officials from all sides of the political spectrum, that examine the usefulness and appropriate application of the “Lawfare” concept.

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Professor Kelly coordinates the International and Comparative Law Program at Creighton University School of Law. He is the newly-elected president of the U.S. National Chapter of L'association International du Droit Pénal, a Paris-based society of international criminal law scholars, judges and attorneys founded in 1924 that enjoys consultative status with the United Nations. His research and teaching focuses on the fields of international and comparative law and Native American law. He is the author and co-author of four books and over thirty articles and book chapters in these areas, and his work is among the top 15% downloaded from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Professor Kelly has presented his views on U.N. Security Council reform to the Academic Council of the U.N. System in New York and has consulted with the Kurdish regional parliament in Erbil on drafting their new constitution under the federal law of Iraq. His Op-Ed columns have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, San Diego Union Tribune, Detroit News, Chicago Sun-Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Omaha World Herald; and he continues to serve as a Contributing Editor to the online legal newspaper JURIST. Professor Kelly wrote the grant that USAID awarded to the Law School calling for creation of a model Cuba/U.S. bilateral property claims settlement tribunal which can be offered to a transitional government in Havana after the Castro regime is gone. University Vice President Patrick Borchers led the team of six law and political science faculty tasked with building this model, which was reported out as a book on The Resolution of Outstanding Property Claims Between Cuba & the United States (Creighton University Press 2007). His other books include Ghosts of Halabja: Saddam Hussein & the Kurdish Genocide (Praeger 2008), with a foreword by Judge Ra'id Juhi al-Saedi, Nowhere to Hide: Defeat of the Sovereign Immunity Defense for Crimes of Genocide (Peter Lang 2005), with a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Equal Justice in the Balance: America's Legal Responses to the Emerging Terrorist Threat (University of Michigan Press 2004) co-authored with Raneta Lawson Mack, with a foreword by Michael Ratner. His most recent law review articles can be found in the international journals at UCLA, Case Western, Wisconsin and Cornell. Professor Kelly received his LL.M. in International & Comparative Law from Georgetown University and his J.D. and B.A. from Indiana University, where he served as an editor of the Indiana International & Comparative Law Review and president of the Student Bar Association. He was an attorney with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and, before joining the Creighton faculty in 2001, taught at Michigan State University College of Law.
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James Ogoola became Principal Judge of the Ugandan Judiciary in 1998. He is also Justice of Appeal for the East African Court of Justice 2009 to 2016 and Lord Justice, COMESA Court of Justice from 1999 to 2013. Justice Ogoola has been Senior Legal Counsel to the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC and Paris, France from 1974 to 1998. In addition, he has been Chairman of the Transitional Justice Working Group in Uganda, since 2008. Justice Ogoola was an Associate Professor of International Finance Law at American University School of Law from 1980 to 1982 and Principal Legislative Draftsman for the Uganda government from 1969 to 1974. His other positions include: Chairman of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Mismanagement of HIV/AIDS Funds in Uganda in 2005 and Chairman of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Failed Banks in Uganda in 2000. Justice Ogoola has translated the Bible into his mother tongue, Lusamia. The translation was launched in July 2008. He also published an anthology of poetry, “Songs of Paradise,” in July 2009. Justice Ogoola received his LLB with Honors from the University of Dares Salaam, Tanzania in 1969. He obtained his LLM from Columbia University in New York in 1974.
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Robert Petit was called to the Bar in 1988 and started his legal career as a Crown Prosecutor in Montreal for eight years eventually focusing on organised criminality and complex cases. From 1996 to 1999, he embarked on an international career starting as a Legal Officer in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Subsequently between 1999 and 2004, he was a Legal Advisor for the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, a Prosecutor for the Serious Crimes Unit of the United Nations Missions of Support to East Timor, and a Senior Trial Attorney with the Office of the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In 2006, he was named by the United Nations as International Co Prosecutor of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia a position he held until September 2009 when he returned to Canada and his current position as Counsel with the War Crimes Section of Canada’s Federal Department of Justice.
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David M. Crane was appointed a professor of practice at Syracuse University College of Law in 2006 after having been a distinguished visiting professor for a year. He was the founding Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (2002-05), appointed by the Secretary General of the U.N., Kofi Annan. With the rank of Undersecretary General, Prof. Crane’s mandate was to prosecute those who bear the greatest responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international human rights committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone during the 1990’s. Among those he indicted was the President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, the first sitting African head of state to be held accountable. Prof. Crane was the first American since Justice Robert Jackson and Telford Taylor at Nuremberg, in 1945, to be Chief Prosecutor of an international war crimes tribunal. Appointed to the U.S. Senior Executive Service in 1997, Prof. Crane has held numerous key positions, including Senior Inspector General, Department of Defense; Assistant General Counsel of the Defense, Intelligence Agency; and Waldemar A. Solf Professor of International Law at the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School. Prof. Crane teaches international criminal law, international law, international humanitarian law, and national security law. He is on the faculty of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, a joint venture with the Maxwell School of Public Citizenship at Syracuse University. Prof. Crane is on the leadership council of the American Bar Association’s International Law Section and is Chairman of its Blue Ribbon Panel on the International Criminal Court’s 2010 Review Session. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Association. In 2006-07, he founded *Impunity Watch* (www.impunitywatch.net) a law review and public service blog.
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Prior to joining the London School of Economics, Jens Meierhenrich taught at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including *The Rationality of Genocide, The Structure of Genocide*, and *The Culture of Genocide* (all forthcoming from Princeton University Press) as well as *Genocide: A Very Short Introduction and Genocide: A Reader* (both forthcoming from Oxford University Press). He just completed his book *Lawfare* (under review) and also recently authored *The Legacies of Law* (Cambridge University Press), which won the American Political Science Association’s 2009 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the “best book published in the United States during the previous year in politics, government, or international affairs.” A Rhodes Scholar, he recently served in Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and previously worked with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
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David Scheffer teaches International Human Rights Law, International Criminal Law, and Corporate Human Rights Responsibility. He supervises the International Externship Program and in 2007-08, received the Dean’s Teaching Award. Prof. Scheffer was previously the U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001) and led the U.S. delegation in U.N. talks establishing the International Criminal Court. During his ambassadorship, he negotiated and coordinated U.S. support for the establishment and operation of international and hybrid criminal tribunals and U.S. responses to atrocities. During the first term of the Clinton Administration, he was senior adviser and counsel to the U.S. Representative to the U.N., Dr. Madeleine Albright. Prof. Scheffer recently held visiting professorships at Georgetown and George Washington University. Earlier he taught at Duke and Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He has published extensively on international legal and political issues and appears regularly in the national and international media. Member of the New York and DC Bars, the American Society of International Law (formerly serving on the Executive Council), and the Council on Foreign Relations, he was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Law Students Association (2004-08). He earned his AB from Harvard University, his BA (Honour School of Jurisprudence), Oxford University and LLM, Georgetown University. Prof. Scheffer has been a Senior Fellow, U.S. Institute of Peace; Senior Vice President, U.N. Association of the U.S.A.; Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Senior Consultant, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives; International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations; and Associate, Coudert Brothers.
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