Curbing the Manipulation of Universal Jurisdiction

Product Description In the past decade Israeli officials have been bombarded by both criminal and civil lawsuits for their political activities in the Israeli government and/or their military activities in the Israel Defense Forces. Examples of this are the criminal complaints that were filed in Belgium in 2001 against former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and in the United Kingdom in August 2005 against Major General (res.) Doron Almog, as well as the arrest warrant that was issued in New Zealand in 2006 against former Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon. The most recent instance was the arrest warrant issued in the United Kingdom against Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes committed during, Israel's Gaza Operation when she was Israel's foreign minister. Similar civil suits have also been launched in the U.S. against, for example, Avi Dichter, the former Director of the Israel Security Agency. Israel's supporters have pointed to these legal acrobatics as a clear abuse of the principle of universal jurisdiction, a new tool in the toolbox of Israel's detractors and critics. Advocates of the Jewish state have coined the term lawfare to describe this situation. They define lawfare as 'a strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve military objectives.' While sounding far-fetched to the neutral observer and hysterical to those wary of claims of international anti-Semitism masked as anti-Israel sentiment, warnings of the possible abuse of the principle of universal jurisdiction pre-date these Israeli claims. For instance, in an article published in Foreign Affairs in 2001 entitled The Pitfalls of Universal Jurisdiction: Risking Judicial Tyranny, former U.S. Secretary of State and Nobel Laureate Henry Kissinger commended advocates of universal jurisdiction for their commitment to bringing to justice human rights violators, but warned of 'pushing the effort to extremes' and risking 'substituting the tyranny of judges for that of governments.' About the Author Justus Reid Weiner is an international human rights lawyer and a member of the Israel and New York Bar Associations. He received his Juris Doctor degree from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley. Weiner's professional publications have appeared in prominent law journals, monographs, and intellectual magazines. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow of the Global Law Forum, a Scholar in Residence at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and an adjunct lecturer at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Weiner was formerly a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Law, Boston University. He also practiced law as a litigation associate in the international law firm White & Case and served as the Director of American Law and External Relations at the Israel Ministry of Justice specializing in human rights and other facets of public international law. Diane Morrison earned her Bachelor of Arts and her Bachelor of Laws degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. She received her LLM and her MA in International Legal Studies from New York University School of Law. Morrison was a legal clerk in the Tel Aviv-based law firm of Herzog, Fox & Ne'eman and joined the Israel Bar in 2008.