Nancy Amoury Combs

Copping a Plea to Genocide: The Plea Bargaining of International Crimes

This article comprehensively analyzes the functional and ideological role that plea bargaining plays in various domestic jurisdictions and in doing so creates a theoretical framework for understanding the emergence of plea bargaining in the realm of international criminal prosecutions.

Understanding Kaye Scholer: The Autonomous Citizen, the Managed Subject and the Role of the Lawyer

The Office of Thrift Supervisions (OTS) unprecedented enforcement action against Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays and Handler (Kaye Scholer) prompted howls of protest from the legal community. OTS, it was claimed, was using its excessive power to redefine the role of the lawyer. This Comment confirms that OTS sought to impose duties on Kaye Scholer that conflict with professional ethics rules. The Comment then goes on to suggest that the conflict over professional responsibility in the Kaye Scholer case reflects, more fundamentally, a conflict over the role of the citizen, and the citizens relationship with the state. Our adversarial system of dispute resolution is founded on our democratic assumption of citizen autonomy. Citizens are presumed to have independent interests and goals that the state must take into account when it regulates their activities. By contrast, OTS views the thrifts it regulates not as autonomous citizens but as instrumental means of achieving OTS goals. This Comment contends that it is this divergence in the concept of the citizen that gave rise in the Kaye Scholer case to the conflict regarding the appropriate role of the lawyer. The Comment concludes by exploring some normative questions raised by the OTS regulatory scheme.

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia¿genocide and crimes against humanity¿international criminal law and procedure¿plea bargaining¿justice, reconciliation, and sentencing

Avena provides the International Court of Justice with a unique opportunity to clarify its prior judgment in LaOrand. The Courts need to do so stems, in part, from its effort in LaOrand to craft a remedy that provided the United States with some deference in how to implement treaty obligations. The Avena case reveals the ambiguity of the LaGrandjudgment and suggests, perhaps, the perils of such deference.