PhD studies in human rights: Judge Sotomayor on Death Penalty

Sunday, 28 June 2009

Judge Sotomayor on Death Penalty

it is difficult to pin down the position of Obama's first nominee for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, on the issue of capital punishment. Of course, coming from New York State, where there has really been no effective death penalty for several decades, it is not strange that she would not have had a chance to express judicial views on the matter. Moreover, under the bizarre system of judicial appointments in the United States, a person who expresses views on issues like capital punishment and abortion can be pretty certain of ruling themselves out for appointment to higher courts. The New York Times recently published an article attempting to divine her position: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/us/politics/25death.html?emc=eta1.
My reading of the US Supreme Court is that there are four pretty certain votes for judicial abolition of capital punishment at some point in the near future, but I am including Judge Sotomayor. This is based on opinions of the justices in recent cases, notably Roper v. Simmonds of 2005, which ruled the juvenile death penalty to be unconstitutional. When I read that ruling, I am struck by how many of the arguments used by the majority work for the death penalty in general.
So there are two missing ingredients. A fifth judge. And a good test case. Obama will have to resolve the first part (assuming some cooperatio from the right-wingers on the Court, one of whom needs to move on to another career and leave a seat open for a new appointment). As for a good test case, there will be no shortage, I am sure. There are only about fifty countries left that have capital punishment, and of them the majority rarely use it. That the United States will abolish the death penalty, by Supreme Court judgment, within the next ten or fifteen years seems to me to be as likely as the melting of the glaciers in Greenland.
Thanks to Chris Ryan.

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William A. Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He is also professor of international criminal law and human rights at Leiden University, emeritus professor human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights of the National University of Ireland Galway, and an honorary professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in Beijing and Wuhan University. He is the author of more than 20 books and 300 journal articles, on such subjects as the abolition of capital punishment, genocide and the international criminal tribunals. Professor Schabas was a member of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in Human Rights and president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He serves as president of the Irish Branch of the International Law Association chair of the Institute for International Criminal Investigation. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Here is the full c.v.

Dr Yvonne McDermott is Senior Lecturer in Law at Bangor University, UK, where she is also Director of Teaching and Learning and Co-Director of the Bangor Centre for International Law. Yvonne is a graduate of the National University of Ireland, Galway (B. Corp. Law, LL.B.), Leiden University (LL.M. cum laude) and the Irish Centre for Human Rights (Ph.D.). Her research focuses on fair trial rights, international criminal procedure and international criminal law. She is the author of Fairness in International Criminal Trials (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Niamh Hayes has been the Head of Office for the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) in The Hague since September 2012. She is about to complete her Ph.D. on the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence by international criminal tribunals at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway. She previously worked for Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice as a legal consultant, and as an intern for the defence at the ICTY in the Karadzic case. She has lectured on international criminal law and international law at Trinity College Dublin and, along with Prof. William Schabas and Dr. Yvonne McDermott, is a co-editor of The Ashgate Research Companion to International Criminal Law: Critical Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013). She is the author of over 45 case reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law and has published numerous articles and book chapters on the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.

Joseph Powderly is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. Between September 2008 and January 2010, he was a Doctoral Fellow/Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, where he worked, among other projects, on a Irish Government-funded investigation and report into the possible perpetration of crimes against humanity against the Rohingya people of North Rakhine State, Burma/Myanmar. He is currently in the process of completing his doctoral research which looks at the impact of theories of judicial interpretation on the development of international criminal and international humanitarian law. The central thesis aims to identify and analyze the potential emergence of a specific theory of interpretation within the sphere of judicial creativity. Along with Dr. Shane Darcy of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, he is co-editor of and contributor to the edited collection Judicial Creativity in International Criminal Tribunals which was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He has written over 80 case-reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law, as well as numerous book chapters and academic articles on topics ranging from the principle of complementarity to Irish involvement in the drafting of the Geneva Conventions. In December 2010, he was appointed Managing Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Criminal Law Forum. His research interests while focusing on international criminal and international humanitarian law also include topics such as the history of international law and freedom of expression.