Vanderbilt’s Newton was involved in the creation of the Iraqi Special Tribunal and trained its judges. Mike Newton, acting associate clinical professor of law at Vanderbilt University, is an expert on the Iraqi Special Tribunal and international criminal law. He helped establish the Iraqi Special Tribunal and led the training in international criminal law for its judges, including sessions in Baghdad. He still advises the tribunal and is part of the academic consortium supporting it. Newton can speak to the temperament of the judges, their training in the elements of crimes and in crimes against humanity and the connection between the Iraqi domestic criminal procedure code and the rules embodied in the Special Tribunal’s Statute and Rules of Procedure. Prior to his recent retirement from active duty, Newton taught international law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Formerly on faculty at the Judge Advocate General’s School, he also was senior adviser to the U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, where he implemented policies relating to international criminal law and the law of armed conflict. He was one of two U.S. delegates negotiating the Elements of Crimes document for the International Criminal Court. Read more on Mike Newton.
Watch a video about Mike Newton’s work with the Iraqi Tribunal.
How does the Saddam Hussein tribunal differ from other war crimes trials? Allison Danner, associate professor of law at Vanderbilt, is an expert in the law, procedure and design of international criminal tribunals. She can explain the significant differences in procedure and substance between the Iraqi process and other war crimes trials, such as those involving Slobodan Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia and those in Rwanda and Sierra Leone. Danner is the author of numerous articles on the subject, including “Constructing a Hierarchy of Crimes in International Criminal Law Sentencing,” “When Courts Make Law: How the International Criminal Tribunals Transformed the Laws of War” and the forthcoming “Beyond the Geneva Conventions: Lessons from the Tokyo Tribunal in Prosecuting War and Terrorism,” and she is co-author of “Guilty Associations: Joint Criminal Enterprise, Command Responsibility, and the Development of International Criminal Law.” Danner is a member of the American Society of International Law and the American Association of the International Association of Penal Law.
Vanderbilt has a broadcast facility with a dedicated fiber optic line for live TV interviews and an ISDN line. To interview Newton or Danner, call 615-322-2706. After business hours, call anytime at 615-951-5472 (the Vanderbilt News Service pager.
Media contact: Susanne Hicks, 615-322-2706
susanne.hicks@vanderbilt.edu