{"id":5259,"date":"2009-05-21T13:15:58","date_gmt":"2009-05-21T18:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=5259"},"modified":"2009-05-21T13:16:45","modified_gmt":"2009-05-21T18:16:45","slug":"nobody-expects-the-spanish-inquisition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/05\/nobody-expects-the-spanish-inquisition\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“Our four weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to\u2026Justice<\/em>?\u201d Cardinal Xim\u00e9nez, put aside the [dish-drying] rack and the Comfy Chair. Torture should be thrown into the ash heap of history. Spanish Inquisitors have devised a more clever means to punish the errant: universal jurisdiction.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

With apologies to Monty Python, and with no intention of being too flip with a grave topic, I was struck when I heard this story<\/a> on NPR\u2019s Morning Edition<\/em> on the drive to work. To quote,<\/p>\n

\n

Spain\u2019s National Court operates under the principle of universal jurisdiction. As a result of a 2005 ruling by the Constitutional Court, the National Court must investigate allegations of crimes like torture and terrorism in another country if no legal action is being taken there.<\/p>\n

Now, the court\u2019s docket contains more than a dozen cases in countries including China, Morocco, Israel and the United States.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thus, in March of this year, a Spanish magistrate on the National Court, Judge Baltasar Garzon \u201cstarted an investigation into allegations that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other Bush administration lawyers gave legal justification for torture at Guantanamo.\u201d The BBC reports<\/a> that\u00a0\u201cMr. Garzon is one of six investigating judges for Spain\u2019s National Court which, like many other European countries, operates an inquisitorial system, as opposed to the adversarial system used by the US and UK. \u00a0The investigating judge\u2019s role is to examine the cases assigned to him by the court, gathering evidence and evaluating whether the case should be brought to trial. He does not try the cases himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

NPR further asserts that National Court Judge Javier Gomez Bermudez, who presided over the Madrid bombing trial of 2007 and sentenced<\/a> the three bombers to as many as 42,924 years in prison<\/span>, \u201cwould most likely be on the bench for any case regarding Guantanamo.\u201d Nonetheless, Judge Gomez Bermudez is quoted as saying to NPR that<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s evident that in an international community of democratic states, no state can arrogate to itself the authority to supervise what another is doing \u2014 except in the case that the other is doing absolutely nothing. If President Obama is taking a series of decisions in favor of human rights, it doesn\u2019t make apparent sense for us to come and put icing on the cake.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

NPR concludes its report by citing a human rights attorney, Gonzalo Boye, who first brought claims against Bush administration officials; Boye claims that \u201cAmericans should embrace universal jurisdiction,\u201d because \u201cAmerica was once one of the early proponents of the idea, at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a novice to international law and universal jurisdiction, I welcome responses to this NPR report, especially to Judge Garzon’s and Judge Gomez Bermudez\u2019s comments. As an amateur student of history, I also welcome comments about similarities and differences between the Nuremberg trials and current efforts to prosecute citizens of other nations for crimes against humanity, et cetera. Here is an older (2001) article in Foreign Affairs<\/em> by Henry Kissinger opposing<\/a> universal jurisdiction, and a response<\/a> by Kenneth Roth in favor.<\/p>\n

Cardinals Biggles and Fang, if Spain has its way, you will be busy\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 “Our four weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to\u2026Justice?\u201d Cardinal Xim\u00e9nez, put aside the [dish-drying] rack and the Comfy Chair. Torture should be thrown into the ash heap of history. Spanish Inquisitors have devised a more clever means to punish the errant: universal jurisdiction. With apologies to Monty Python, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}