Mitchell Institute Deputy Director, Professor Louise Mallinder, delivered a public lecture at the University of Chicago on 18 April 2024. Her talk was entitled ‘Does International Law Bar Amnesties for Serious Human Rights Violations?’ and was chaired by Professor Anjli Parrin, who is the Director of the Global Human Rights Clinic.

In her talk, Professor Mallinder discussed her current book project that examines whether a norm has evolved in international law to prohibit the use of amnesties for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations. This salience of this topic is evident if we consider that in 2004, the Special Court of Sierra Leone proclaimed that there was a ‘crystallizing international norm’ to prohibit states from enacting amnesties for serious crimes, such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. However, in 2020, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court argued that ‘international law is still in the developmental stage on the question of acceptability of amnesties,’ suggesting that the Special Court of Sierra Leone’s anticipated future for amnesties has not yet definitively come to pass.

In exploring this question, Professor Mallinder engaged with theories on how to identify and interpret international legal norms. She used this framework to contrast the interpretative strategies used by international courts with more positivist approaches that place greater emphasis on state practice. She further used original empirical data on state practice to identify areas of divergence between judicial decisions and state practice on amnesties. This data is drawn primarily from the Amnesties, Conflict, and Peace Agreement database.

This event was sponsored by the University of Chicago Law School’s International Programs and International Law Society, and the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, where Professor Mallinder is currently the 2024 Pozen Professor of Human Rights.

 

Professor Louise Mallinder

Professor Mallinder is the Deputy Director and Theme Lead for Legacy at the Mitchell Institute. Louise is also Professor of Law at the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests relate to the fields of international human rights law, international criminal law, and law and politics in political transitions.