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Response to Jack Goldsmith: Trump's Indictment in Global Context

Jack Goldsmith, in his guest essay in the New York Times on August 8th, argued that the prosecution of Trump for criminal actions in connection to the 2020 presidential election “may have terrible consequences” for the US legal and political system.   Goldsmith makes an entirely counterfactual argument without mentioning once that many other countries have prosecuted their current and former heads of state without the dire consequences Goldsmith predicts for the United States.  He infers that the US legal and political...

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“There is a Future if There is Truth”: A Discussion of Colombia’s Truth Commission Report

Helen Clapp

“Transitional justice is a polarized terrain – both in practice and in study.” Daniel Marin-Lopez, Kathryn Sikkink, and Patrick Vinck delved into the complications and contradictions inherent in the Colombia Truth Commission and the field of transitional justice more broadly during a panel hosted by the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School on Thursday, October 13. Moderated by HKS Professor Yanilda Gonzalez, the three panelists, all members of the Transitional Justice...

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Deterrence and Impunity: Insights from Human Rights Prosecutions for an International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC)

Kathryn Sikkink

Last week, I attended an invigorating workshop on the need for an International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC), organized by the American Academy of Arts and Science (AAAS), under the leadership of Robert Rotberg and Judge Mark Wolf.   Some of the leading international figures who were involved in the campaign for the 1997 Landmines Convention and for an...

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How our response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine could help usher in an Age of Accountability

Phuong Pham, Kathryn Sikkink, and Patrick Vinck

The Biden administration and its allies have acted with unprecedented alacrity to impose far reaching sanctions and diplomatic pressures on Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine.  They now need to add serious support for individual criminal accountability to their game plan. There’s a practical path for making that happen.

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