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International Justice and Judicial Decision Making at the Appellate Level

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

James Meernik
James Meernik*
Affiliation:
University of North Texas
*
Contact the author at [email protected].
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Abstract

International law is an evolving body of jurisprudence characterized by ambiguities, gaps, and lack of precedent. I argue that the propensity of the prosecution or the defense to emerge victorious on issues on appeal will depend on the legal issues they raise. I introduce a new database on the outcomes of every extant appeal filed by both the prosecution and the defense at the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. I find that the defense is more often likely to win on appeal when it appeals issues that are dynamic and inchoate in international law.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Fall 2016 , pp. 313 - 338
Copyright
© 2016 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

The author will make the data available on request for replication purposes upon publication (September 2016). The data will be available from the author for all other purposes 1 year after the print publication of the article.

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