Quality Control in Fact-Finding

Quality Control in Fact-Finding

Author: Morten Bergsmo

Publisher: Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher

Published: 2013-11-16

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 8293081783

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This book discusses how fact-finding mechanisms for alleged violations of international human rights, humanitarian and criminal law can be improved. There has been a significant increase in the use of international, internationalised and domestic fact-finding mechanisms since 1992, including by the United Nations human rights system, international commissions of inquiry, truth and reconciliation commissions, and NGOs. They are analysed and assessed in detail by 19 authors under the common theme 'Quality Control in Fact-Finding'. The authors include Richard J. Goldstone, Martin Scheinin, LIU Daqun, Charles Garraway, David Re, Simon De Smet, FAN Yuwen, Isabelle Lassée, WU Xiaodan, Dan Saxon, Chris Mahony, Dov Jacobs, Catherine Harwood, Lyal S. Sunga, Wolfgang Kaleck, Carolijn Terwindt, Ilia Utmelidze and Marina Aksenova. Serge Brammertz has written the Preface, and LING Yan a Foreword. The book emphasises quality awareness and improvement in non-criminal justice fact-work. This quality control approach recognises, inter alia, the importance of leadership in fact-finding mechanisms, the responsibility of individual fact-finders to continuously professionalise, and the need for fact-finders to be mandate-centred. It is an approach that invites the consideration of how the quality of every functional aspect of fact-finding can be improved, including work processes to identify, locate, obtain, verify, analyse, corroborate, summarise, synthesise, structure, organise, present, and disseminate facts. The book also considers regulatory approaches to enhance quality and professionalisation.


The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-finding

The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-finding

Author: Philip Alston

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 0190239492

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Fact-finding is at the heart of human rights advocacy, and is often at the center of international controversies about alleged government abuses. In recent years, human rights fact-finding has greatly proliferated and become more sophisticated and complex, while also being subjected to stronger scrutiny from governments. Nevertheless, despite the prominence of fact-finding, it remains strikingly under-studied and under-theorized. Too little has been done to bring forth the assumptions, methodologies, and techniques of this rapidly developing field, or to open human rights fact-finding to critical and constructive scrutiny. The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of fact-finding with rigorous and critical analysis of the field of practice, while providing a range of accounts of what actually happens. It deepens the study and practice of human rights investigations, and fosters fact-finding as a discretely studied topic, while mapping crucial transformations in the field. The contributions to this book are the result of a major international conference organized by New York University Law School's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Engaging the expertise and experience of the editors and contributing authors, it offers a broad approach encompassing contemporary issues and analysis across the human rights spectrum in law, international relations, and critical theory. This book addresses the major areas of human rights fact-finding such as victim and witness issues; fact-finding for advocacy, enforcement, and litigation; the role of interdisciplinary expertise and methodologies; crowd sourcing, social media, and big data; and international guidelines for fact-finding.


Fact-Finding before the International Court of Justice

Fact-Finding before the International Court of Justice

Author: James Gerard Devaney

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-09-29

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1316720896

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Fact-Finding before the International Court of Justice examines a number of significant recent criticisms of the way in which the ICJ deals with facts. The book takes the position that such criticisms are warranted and that the ICJ's current approach to fact-finding falls short of adequacy, both in cases involving abundant, particularly complex or technical facts, and in those involving a scarcity of facts. The author skilfully examines how other courts such as the WTO and inter-State arbitrations conduct fact-finding and makes a number of select proposals for reform, enabling the ICJ to address some of the current weaknesses in its approach. The proposals include, but are not limited to, the development of a power to compel the disclosure of information, greater use of provisional measures, and a clear strategy for the use of expert evidence.


Promoting Peace Through International Law

Promoting Peace Through International Law

Author: Cecilia Bailliet

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 0198722737

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This book considers the liberal conception of peace within Western philosophy and the principle of 'peaceful coexistence' supported in the East. It investigates there is a 'right to peace' by tracing the evolution of the international law of peace through its historical and philosophical origins.


Quality Control in Criminal Investigation

Quality Control in Criminal Investigation

Author: Xabier Agirre Aranburu

Publisher: Torkel Opsahl Academic Epublisher

Published: 2020-11-09

Total Pages: 1116

ISBN-13: 9788283481297

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Edited by Xabier Agirre Aranburu, Morten Bergsmo, Simon De Smet and Carsten Stahn, this 1,108-page book offers detailed analyses on how the investigation and preparation of fact-rich cases can be improved, both in national and international jurisdictions. Twenty-four chapters organized in five parts address, inter alia, evidence and analysis, systemic challenges in case-preparation, investigation plans as instruments of quality control, and judicial and prosecutorial participation in investigation and case-preparation. The authors include Antonio Angotti, Devasheesh Bais, Olympia Bekou, Gilbert Bitti, Leïla Bourguiba, Thijs B. Bouwknegt, Ewan Brown, Eleni Chaitidou, Cale Davis, Markus Eikel, Shreeyash Uday Lalit, Moa Lidén, Tor-Geir Myhrer, Trond Myklebust, Matthias Neuner, Christian Axboe Nielsen, Gilad Noam, Gavin Oxburgh, David Re, Alf Butenschøn Skre, Usha Tandon, William Webster and William H. Wiley, in addition to the four co-editors. There are also forewords by Fatou Bensouda and Manoj Kumar Sinha, and a prologue by Gregory S. Gordon. The book follows from a conference at the Indian Law Institute in New Delhi, and is the main outcome of the third leg of a research project of the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP) known as the 'Quality Control Project'. Other books produced by the project are Quality Control in Fact-Finding (Second Edition, 2020) and Quality Control in Preliminary Examination: Volumes 1 and 2 (2018). Covering three distinct phases - documentation, preliminary examination and investigation - the volumes consider how the quality of each phase can be improved. Emphasis is placed on the nourishment of an individual mindset and institutional culture of quality control.


Fact-Finding without Facts

Fact-Finding without Facts

Author: Nancy A. Combs

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-07-30

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1139489712

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Fact-Finding Without Facts explores international criminal fact-finding - empirically, conceptually, and normatively. After reviewing thousands of pages of transcripts from various international criminal tribunals, the author reveals that international criminal trials are beset by numerous and severe fact-finding impediments that substantially impair the tribunals' ability to determine who did what to whom. These fact-finding impediments have heretofore received virtually no publicity, let alone scholarly treatment, and they are deeply troubling not only because they raise grave concerns about the accuracy of the judgments currently being issued but because they can be expected to similarly impair the next generation of international trials that will be held at the International Criminal Court. After setting forth her empirical findings, the author considers their conceptual and normative implications. The author concludes that international criminal tribunals purport a fact-finding competence that they do not possess and, as a consequence, base their judgments on a less precise, more amorphous method of fact-finding than they publicly acknowledge.