Maximo Langer

The Diplomacy of Universal Jurisdiction: The Political Branches and the Transnational Prosecution of International Crimes

Under universal jurisdiction, any state in the world may prosecute and try the core international crimes— crimes against humanity, genocide, torture, and war crimes—without any territorial, personal, or national-interest link to the crime in question whenit was committed.The jurisdictional claim is predicated on the atrocious nature of the crime and legally based on treaties or customary international law. Unlike the regime of international criminal tribunals created by the United Nations Security Council and the enforcement regime of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the regime of universal jurisdiction is completely decentralized.

Strength, Weakness or Both? On the Endurance of the Adversarial-Inquisitorial Systems in Comparative Criminal Procedure

This epilogue, written for a handbook on comparative criminal procedure, makes a general reflection on this field of research, inquiry and policy-making by concentrating on the opposition between adversarial and inquisitorial systems in particular and between civil law and common law more generally. Contrary to claims that comparative criminal procedure is a new field, this paper argues that contemporary comparative criminal procedure is an heir of the classical adversarial-inquisitorial and common law-civil law tradition that have been at the center of this field for a very long time. This paper also maintains that the distinctions between adversarial and inquisitorial systems and common and civil law still provide important insights for analysis of the criminal process from a comparative angle. Finally, the paper argues that despite the continued utility of these distinctions, the centrality of these categories also has had negative effects on the comparative analysis of the criminal process. The first of these negative effects is blinding. The centrality of the adversarial-inquisitorial distinction has made aspects of or perspectives on the criminal process invisible to comparative criminal procedure scholars (and judges and policy-makers). The second of these effects is distracting. Even when comparative criminal procedure scholars have been aware of unexplored issues around the criminal process, the centrality of the adversarial-inquisitorial categories has led scholars (and judges and policy-makers) to concentrate on certain topics, perspectives and methodologies to the detriment of others. The third of these effects is blurring. The centrality of these categories has, in some cases, impoverished the analysis by comparative criminal procedure scholars (and judges and policy-makers). The paper uses examples to illustrate these effects.

Reforma a la justicia penal juvenil y adolescentes privados de libertad en Chile: Aportes empíricos para el debate

Spanish Abstract: Este articulo tiene por objeto brindar y analizar algunos datos empiricos sobre el funcionamiento de la Justicia Penal Adolescente luego de siete anos de la entrada en vigencia de la Ley N° 20.084. Uno de los objetivos de esta reforma fue adecuar la legislacion en la materia a los estandares del Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos, entre los cuales se encuentran el criterio de intervencion penal especial reducida o moderada y la utilizacion de la privacion de libertad como medida de ultima ratio. Nuestros datos indican que con posterioridad a su entrada en vigencia han aumentado tanto el numero total de adolescentes privados de su libertad como la tasa relativa y la proporcion de adolescentes privados de su libertad en comparacion con los adultos. La conclusion de este estudio es que la reforma de la justicia penal juvenil, en su funcionamiento actual, probablemente ha contribuido a estos resultados. Sin embargo, este articulo no pretende agotar estos temas, sino mas bien motivar una mayor investigacion de tipo empirico que contribuya al debate publico sobre este tema, asi como promover la generacion de mejores estadisticas por parte de las instituciones intervinientes.English Abstract: This article aims at providing and analyzing empirical data regarding the criminal juvenile system in Chile seven years after the coming into effect of Act N° 20084 (which established the juvenile criminal responsibility system in Chile). One of the goals of this reform was to adequate the criminal juvenile justice legislation to international human rights standards, that include the principles of exceptional and moderate use of criminal law and of using confinement only as ultima ratio. Our data indicate that after the coming into effect of the juvenile justice reform, the adolescent confinement rate has increased in absolute terms (i.e., in terms of the total number of adolescents in confinement) and in relative terms in comparison with the adult population in criminal confinement. We conclude that the criminal juvenile justice reform, as currently configurated, has probably contributed to this result.