Gender-Based Crimes and the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace
Caroline Davidson
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The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (“JEP”), created as part of Colombia’s historic 2016 Peace Agreement, has been hailed as a novel, restorative justice-oriented mechanism for addressing gross human rights violations at the domestic level. Commentators point to the JEP as a potential model for other jurisdictions looking to address mass atrocities. The success or failure of this model hinges on the JEP’s ability to effectively address an issue of great concern to the International Criminal Court as well as to Colombian civil society: gender-based crimes. This Article is the first to examine comprehensively the JEP’s progress on this vital issue, more than halfway through its ten-year mandate.
Based on months of research in Colombia, this Article explores key developments related to gender-based crimes at the JEP and the various forces promoting and complicating the pursuit of justice for victims of sexual and gender-based violence in Colombia. It derives some lessons for other jurisdictions considering the Colombian model, in particular: the importance of clarity on the investigative mandate of the court, particularly for historically under-investigated crimes like gender-based ones; an analysis of the benefits and challenges of the restorative justice approach in the context of gendered violence; and the need for caution in the use of “macrocriminal patterns.”
When Electrification Meets Reindustrialization: The First EU Green Electric Vehicle Subsidies and the WTO Consistency
Mandy Meng Fang
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The French Government recently reformed the “Ecological Bonus” scheme, which has generously supported its domestic consumers in purchasing electric vehicles (“EVs”), by introducing a new criterion based on the amount of carbon emitted in the vehicle’s manufacturing. Starting in 2024, the scheme strictly sets the production carbon footprint ceiling at 14.75 tons of CO2, effectively denying the subsidy eligibility of more than one-third of EVs sold in France. Other European Union (“EU”) Member States, including Italy, have considered taking similar policy actions. Criticized as the French version of the discriminatory United States Inflation Reduction Act, the new Ecological Bonus scheme also represents the world’s first “green” EV subsidies based on carbon emissions, combining fiscal policy with regulatory standard-setting. This signals not only France’s but also the EU’s ambition to integrate electrification with reindustrialization amid intensified competition for leadership in the low-carbon sector. Given the EU’s obligations under the multilateral trading system as administered by the World Trade Organization (“WTO”), it is essential to examine the WTO’s consistency in the French green EV subsidies to avoid trade frictions, which has received scant attention so far. Therefore, this Article provides the first systematic legal and policy analysis of the interface between France’s new green EV subsidies and the EU’s WTO commitments. A WTO law scrutiny can reveal potential conflicts between Members’ electrification and reindustrialization agenda with the multilateral trading system. This Article makes actionable recommendations for policymakers to align green subsidies with international trade rules to maximize the synergy between trade liberalization and low-carbon transition. It also cautions that the time for revisiting the WTO rules, particularly those governing the use of subsidies to ensure they are fit for global decarbonization, may have arrived.
Countering the Demand Side of Foreign Bribery: An Analysis of the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act
Noah Buyon
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The United States has long criminalized bribery of foreign officials but not bribery by foreign officials. Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), an American may be criminally liable for paying a bribe to another country’s official, but the official commits no corresponding crime. The official might face criminal charges if they launder the proceeds of the bribe through the United States and could find themselves the target of Executive Branch sanctions for their corrupt behavior. But until 2023, the United States largely left the official’s punishment, if any, to the official’s home country. Then, Congress passed the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (“FEPA”), which, under certain circumstances, directly criminalizes bribery by foreign officials. This Note evaluates the FEPA. It concludes that the FEPA represents a step change in U.S. efforts to counter foreign bribery, but the statute’s extraterritorial reach may exceed its grasp.
Criminalization of Homelessness: The Impact of a Market-Oriented Approach
Gabriella M. Chioffi
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Since the fourteenth century, countries have sought to criminalize unhoused individuals by labeling them as “vagrants.” Currently, the United States and other countries continue to criminalize acts of sleeping rough, begging, loitering and other vagrancy-type activities that disproportionately target unhoused persons. Despite going through a period of decriminalization in the 1960s and 1970s, these punitive measures were largely reinstated by the 1990s. In the most extreme case, vagrancy criminalization was entrenched in a state’s constitution. This Note contends that the reversion to punitive measures is triggered by a country’s transition to a market-oriented approach that privatizes housing development and de-emphasizes government control over social housing programs. Analyzing England, the United States, Canada, and Hungary as case studies, this Note explores how adopting a market-oriented approach can set off a chain reaction, including a public outcry against homelessness, that culminates in heightened measures to criminalize homelessness. These examples are contrasted with Scotland and Singapore, which, despite also emerging from similar historical contexts of vagrancy laws, do not criminalize homelessness but instead maintain government control of social housing. This comparison demonstrates the impact that a market-oriented approach has on the availability of housing to explain why certain countries criminalize homelessness.