Berlusconi in the United States

_45915796_obama_berlusconi_ap466I am an Italian citizen (and very proud of it), so I read the Italian news every day.  This is not really “legally relevant,” but  the BBC has a very funny article on the current Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Belusconi, visiting President Obama: “Oh no, Silvio! Will Italian PM avoid offending anyone on US visit?”  So far, Silvio Berlusconi has embarrassed the whole country multiple times with his gaffes (more or less intentional), such as the now-famous description of President Obama as “young, handsome, and sun tanned.”  Still, maybe Berlusconi will spare us this time.

To quote part of the article,

Beppe Severgnini, columnist for Corriere della Sera and author of La Bella Figura – A Field Guide to the Italian Mind, thinks the risk of a PR disaster in Washington is low. He points out that Mr. Berlusconi does not speak English, Mr. Obama does not speak Italian, and they will only meet for one hour to discuss preparations for the G8 summit, which Italy is hosting next month.

And, as Mr. Palandri, a professor at University College London,  puts it, “Even if he does badly he won’t be in an embarrassing position — because we could not be in a more embarrassing position than we are now.” 

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Outlawing Amnesty: The Return of Criminal Justice in Transitional Justice Schemes

Until recently, immunity measures like amnesties were considered an acceptable part of promoting transitional justice in countries seeking to address past episodes of systematic violations of human rights.  The politically sensitive context of countries seeking to broker peace between oppositional forces often outweighed the moral imperative of punishing those responsible for perpetrating human rights atrocities.  Latin America exemplified this trend in the 1980s, while also popularizing truth commissions.  The resulting truth v. justice debate eventually sidelined criminal trials in transitional justice schemes, accepting amnesty as lawful. However, growing international human rights and international criminal law jurisprudence began to slowly put in question the legality of amnesties.   Recognition of individual rights chipped away at absolute state sovereignty by building recognition of the state duty to investigate, prosecute, and punish those responsible for serious violations of human rights.  In addition, the end of the Cold War saw a new reliance on international and hybrid tribunals for criminal prosecutions, a remedy left largely dormant since the Nuremburg trials in 1945.  Jurisprudence emanating from these tribunals solidified the principle of individual criminal liability for egregious human rights violations, which previously was thought to trigger only liability based on the theory of the wrongful acts of states.

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MULS 2009 Works-In-Progress Workshop (June Session)

champTo open my month as faculty blogger, I would first like to thank my colleague Michael O’Hear, whose dedication to, and work for, the Marquette Faculty Blog since its creation last summer have been incredible.  This is very much one of the major reasons why this project has been so successful and brought so many wonderful contributions to so many aspects of the law so far.

Another fundamental area where the Marquette Law School faculty is also showing important contributions to the law is the production of scholarship that results in law review articles, book chapters, textbooks, etc.  We often present and discuss these works when they are still in progress in conferences around the country with our colleagues in our areas at other schools.  Still, to facilitate even further these very important discussions, the MULS Academic Programs Committee, led by Professor Chad Oldfather, has organized two sessions of an in-house Works-in-Progress Workshop for June and July.

The June session was a great success. A group of eight of us met this past Wednesday and presented our works-in-progress, from very rough to more completed drafts of scholarship, to our colleagues participating in the program. 

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