Event Description
Join PILPG and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP on March 22 at 12:00 pm ET for an expert roundtable on the feasibility of establishing a single residual mechanism for international criminal tribunals.
Since the end of World War II, the international community has periodically sought to provide some degree of justice, and some sense of closure, to societies impacted by war. This is often done through the establishment of temporary criminal tribunals, which operate either under international law or under a hybrid model that blends international law with the domestic law of the country where the conflict arose. Because many of the tribunals’ other functions and responsibilities continue past the conclusion of these prosecutions, international and hybrid criminal tribunals transition at some point from full-fledged courts into residual mechanisms, which in practice is a complex process.
This Roundtable will focus on the feasibility of establishing a single consolidated residual mechanism for all or multiple international/hybrid tribunals, by discussing the legal and practical issues associated with such consolidation. During this Roundtable, the experts will share their insights and will discuss the feasibility of this idea. This roundtable will be moderated by PILPG Managing Director Professor Milena Sterio.
This is part of the PILPG Thought Leadership Initiative. The Initiative focuses on prominent international law and international affairs topics and organizes monthly expert roundtables to share expertise and reflections from our work on peace negotiations, post-conflict constitution drafting, and war crimes prosecution.
Speakers
Judge Professor Margaret deGuzman
Judge Professor Margaret deGuzman is a Senior Peace Fellow with PILPG, James E. Beasley Professor of Law at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, and Co-Director of Temple’s Institute for International Law and Public Policy. Her scholarship focuses on the role of international criminal law in the global legal order, with a particular emphasis on the work of the International Criminal Court. In 2022, Judge Professor deGuzman was appointed by the United Nations Secretary General to the roster of Judges of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. She has worked as an international expert in a group studying the proposed addition of criminal jurisdiction to the mandate of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and is currently working on a project researching the impact of the Extraordinary African Chambers in the Courts of Senegal on national, regional, and global justice norms. Prior to joining Temple’s faculty, Judge Professor deGuzman clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced law in San Francisco for six years, specializing in criminal defense. Judge Professor deGuzman also served as a legal advisor to the Senegal delegation at the Rome Conference where the International Criminal Court was created and as a law clerk in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Darou N’diar, Senegal.
Mark A. Drumbl
Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor and Director, Transnational Law Institute, at Washington and Lee University. He has held visiting appointments and has taught intensive courses at law schools world-wide, including Queen’s University Belfast, Oxford University (University College), Université de Paris II (Panthéon-Assas), Free University of Amsterdam, University of Melbourne, and John Cabot University in Rome. His work has been relied upon by courts; he has served as defense lawyer in genocide trials; and has been an expert in litigation including on international terrorism, with the United Nations in matters involving child soldiers, and the drafting of a global convention to criminalize racist hate speech. Books include Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law (CUP, 2007), Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy (OUP, 2012), and Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague (OUP 2024, with Barbora Holá); and co-edited volumes Research Handbook of Child Soldiers (Elgar 2019, with Jastine Barrett); Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions (Brill, 2024, with Caroline Fournet), and Children and Violence (Routledge 2024, with Christelle Molima, Mohamed Kamara et al).
Prosecutor James C. “Jim” Johnson
Prosecutor James C. “Jim” Johnson is a Senior Peace Fellow at PILPG. He is the Prosecutor of the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone. He is the former Chief of Prosecutions at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). Johnson joined the Office of the Prosecutor at the SCSL in 2003 as Senior Trial Attorney, and was named Chief of Prosecutions in 2006. After he left the SCSL in 2012 he served for three years as President and CEO of the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York. Since 2013 he has been an Adjunct Professor of Law and Director of the Henry T. King War Crimes Research Office, Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio. He is also Director of the International Humanitarian Law Roundtable and Managing Director of Justice Consultancy International, LLC.
Eric Kadel
Eric Kadel is the Co-Head of Sullivan & Cromwell’s Economic Sanctions & Financial Crime and Foreign Investment & Trade Regulations Groups and the National Security Practice. Mr. Kadel is a recognized leader in international trade law, including export controls and economic sanctions. Mr. Kadel advises clients on a variety of corporate, transactional and regulatory matters, including national security review of transactions by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), economic sanctions, and cybersecurity issues.
Melike Tokatlioglu
Melike Tokatlioglu is a litigation associate in Sullivan & Cromwell’s New York office. She represents companies and individuals in criminal and regulatory investigations, as well as complex litigation matters involving securities, antitrust, and white-collar enforcement actions. She was previously a transactional attorney in S&C’s London office. Ms. Tokatlioglu has an active pro bono practice focusing on international criminal and humanitarian law matters and has collaborated with PILPG on a variety of projects.
MODERATOR
Professor Milena Sterio
Milena Sterio is the Managing Director of PILPG and the Charles R. Emrick Jr. - Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She is a leading expert on international law, international criminal law and human rights. Sterio leads PILPG’s Thought Leadership Initiative.
Sterio is one of six permanent editors of the prestigious IntLawGrrls blog, and a frequent contributor to the blog focused on international law, policy and practice. In the spring of 2013, Sterio was selected as a Fulbright Scholar, spending the semester in Baku, Azerbaijan, at Baku State University. While in Baku, she had the opportunity to teach and conduct research on secession issues under international law related to the province of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh. Serving as a maritime piracy law expert, she has participated in meetings of the United Nations Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia as well as in the work of the United Nations Global Counterterrorism Forum. Sterio has also assisted piracy prosecutions in Mauritius, Kenya and the Seychelles Islands. Sterio is a graduate of Cornell Law School and the University of Paris I, and was an associate in the New York City firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton before joining the ranks of academia full time. She has published seven books and numerous law review articles. Her latest book, “The Syrian Conflict’s Impact on International Law,” (co-authored with Paul Williams and Michael Scharf) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.
PILPG White Paper: Blueprint for a single residual mechanism for international criminal tribunals
Recognizing the need to evolve the efforts of fulfilling residual responsibilities of international criminal tribunals, Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), in collaboration with Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, embarked on a project to investigate the possibility of establishing a unified, permanent residual mechanism for the ongoing responsibilities of current and future tribunals. The resulting White Paper, details the legal and political feasibility of a permanent single-residual mechanism. Click on the image to the right to access the White Paper.
Just Security Symposium on the Creation of a Single Residual Mechanism for Atrocity Crimes
Introduction to the Symposium.
The Symposium is composed of three parts:
Part I introduces the idea of a single residual mechanism, contextualizing it within a broader framework and history of international criminal justice. It examines the functions of residual mechanisms generally, then outlines in greater detail the benefits and challenges to creating a single residual mechanism.
Part II addresses the primary legal, political, and administrative considerations surrounding the creation of a single residual mechanism, as well as how related challenges might be addressed.
Finally, Part III introduces three possible distinct structural models for a single residual mechanism, each of which would encompass a different scope of functions and be created through a different legal mechanism, while also examining the costs and benefits of each model.