V. Conclusion
Even without 9/11, Bali, London, Madrid, and Amman, there was a need for effective mechanisms to enforce international human rights. The “war against terror” and its use to roll back long-standing human rights protections have merely reinforced this need. Universal jurisdiction, which may be viewed as the globalization of human rights, has a crucial role to play in this process. And civil society has a major role to play in protecting and nurturing the principle of universal jurisdiction and its application, or, in a worst case scenario, in saving it from extinction.
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References
Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book I, Ch. 13.
M. T. Cicero, De Legibus.
M. Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV, Sec. 4.
Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004).
See New York Times, May 30, 2005. On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05pdf-05-184.pdf). While it does not deal with universal jurisdiction as such, it is extremely important as an affirmation of the Geneva Conventions and of international law, including customary international law, contrary to the position of the US administration.
For a history of the groundbreaking Pinochet litigation and some of its progeny see N. Roht-Arriaza, The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights (2005).
See report by ASIL (American Society of International Law) at http://www.asil.org/-ilib/2005/04/ilib050426.htm#j3, with links to the decision in Spanish and analysis by Prof. Richard Wilson.
See International Justice Tribune, October 10, 2005, at http://www.justicetribune.com/-index.php?page=v2_article&id=3195. On July 7, 2006, the Spanish court issued an arrest warrant for former President Efrain Montt and seven other defendants and an international order, transmitted through Interpol, freezing their assets. See http://www.cja.org/cases/Guatemala_News/guatemalawarrants.pdf.
Cf. The Case Against Hissène Habré, an “African Pinochet,” http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/30/chad11786.htm. On July 2, 2006, the African Union, opting for an “African solution”, declared that Hissène Habré should be tried in Senegal despite the ruling of its Supreme Court and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said: “We will not shirk our responsibilities.” (http://www.justicetribune.com/v2_print.php?page=v2_article&mode=print).
Gonzalez Vera et al. v. Henry Kissinger et al., D.C.D.C. 2005, Civil Action 02-02240 (HKK).
In the landmark case Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.2d 876 (1980).
Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692 (2004).
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Weiss, P. (2007). The Future of Universal Jurisdiction. In: Kaleck, W., Ratner, M., Singelnstein, T., Weiss, P. (eds) International Prosecution of Human Rights Crimes. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-46278-1_3
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