No Lightweights

Just in case you thought your bloggers were lightweights, do take note that our co-blauthor Dan Markel is cited extentively by Justice Albie Sachs of the South African Constitutional Court in his recently published article War, Violence, Human Rights and the Overlap between National and International Law, 28 Fordham Int'l L.J. 432.  It's always exciting and gratifying when one's ideas are read and discussed, but it is particularly so when a Justice of a nation's highest court is the one reading and discussing one's work--and endorsing it too.

Sachs' article adopts the argument advanced by Dan in his article from a few years back: that a particularized amnesty regime in a state recovering from mass atrocities, such as South Africa's Truth and Reconcilation Commission, can be understood as compatible with retributive justice, and not an abrogation of justice.

Dan wrote the referenced piece, The Justice of Amnesty? Towards a Theory of Retributivism in Recovering States, 49 U. Toronto L.J. 389 (1999), in law school, and it was published in a special issue of that journal, along with PrawfsBlawg's Rob Howse's piece (co-written with Jennifer Llewellyn).