HIST 3001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Peremptory Norm, Opinio Juris Sive Necessitatis, International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia
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4/2/14
WCT
Kelly Askin Reading
-family value/ loss of purity
-woman raped in front of a man as psychological torture for the man— more than just
hurting the woman
-forcing people to be paraded around naked while people were scoffing at them
-rape is not always listed as one of the crimes available to be used by the court
-why do the courts seem to not use rape as often or make it less of a crime?
•use genocide more often, but don’t accuse someone of rape until they have to
-crimes of international concern
•there are certain crimes that are so great that their concern to all of humanity
constitutes a crime: crimes against humanity
-if grave breaches have occurred, the country who holds the prisoner has to either
prosecute them or hand them over to a country who will
•grave breaches includes torture, but not rape
-but we should look at the damage done to see if we can define rape as torture
-jus cogens: the crimes are prohibited at all times in all places
•genocide, war crimes, torture, slavery, crimes against humanity
•these rules override any state/local laws and have universal jurisdiction
• customary in international law, not just signatories
•abstract theoretical construct because in any given court, someone will be able to
argue that there is no statute that they have violated
-wants rape to be one of the charges under the ICC
-state practice and opinio juris
-basically everyone agrees that the Nuremberg defendants were tried under the
understanding of law rather than the letter of the law
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