Public International Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 1

Public International Law - Essay Example Sovereign countries have well structure court systems, which adjudicates on the offenses as committed and presented. However, individual states are sovereign and cannot be sued by the virtual of independence. The domestic court systems therefore cannot adjudicate against another country, as before the law, independent countries are not sued. However, the domestic legal systems often meet the challenge of adjudicating against state persons such as the heads of government and diplomats for the reason that these persons enjoy immunity from law as provided for by the domestic laws. This has been the background upon which the establishment and running of the international and regional court system is based1. International law has provisions of covering accused persons to avoid prosecution over criminal acts though under specific conditions. Whereas functional immunity covers individuals who perform specific duties in a country, personal immunity is a privilege enjoyed by persons based on the office they hold within a state. Foreign officials usually charged with specific functions of a state often enjoy immunity from the treaty law as well as customary international law. The provision has it that as the persons perform the duties assigned; they are covered against prosecution for any instance of any criminal offense committed. The coverage prevails even after the official stops performing the state duty. It would only cease to apply in the event that the sovereign country ceases to exist and is therefore said to ride on the sovereignty and dignity of a country. Heads of government, states senior ministers as well as cabinet members are example of official responsibilities to which the immunity covers2. The individual occupying the positions would not be prosecuted for any criminal offense committed while in office. Nevertheless, the persons are liable to prosecution only after their term of office is over only for criminal offenses committed before as well as after their occupancy of the specific office. Moreover, the prosecution may cover offenses committed at personal discretion while in office though this often raise concern of the clarity of the provisions. However, emerging concerns in the international legal procedures are that the provisions should only apply to domestic or local civil liabilities and should not apply to international crimes. The essence of the international legal framework would be compromised in the instances where persons and states stand covered against the course of justice by such immunity. On the other hand, customary international law confers such an immunity against prosecution to individuals holding certain offices in the civil, administrative as well as criminal jurisdictions. Agents on diplomatic assignments abroad together with their families are such examples of persons enjoying such privileges of coverage against prosecutions for criminal offenses committed during their tenure in office. Under this type o f immunity, some privileges are inviolable and includes private residence, correspondence, property of an official enjoyments and papers3. The privileges covered on the personal immunity include the cover against arrests as well as detention, civil and administrative jurisdiction, as well as criminal jurisdiction and other such crimes committed over the period. This provisions is based on the needs for sovereign

International Penology Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

International Penology - Term Paper Example In China, death penalty is reserved for human trafficking and serious cases of corruption. According to the Shot at Dawn Pardons Campaign (2006), world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offenses such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny. Since time immemorial capital punishments such as decapitation, electrocution, firing squad, gas chamber, hanging, lethal injection, shooting and stoning have been widely used. Decapitation super cedes all other form of penal practice and this practice has been proved to be fatal, as brain death occurs within seconds to minutes without the support of the organism's body. Decapitation was a common practice in the Asian continent. Countries such as China, India, Japan, Thailand and European, American, and African counterparts also greatly used reserved this practice to punish criminals. However, these types of capital punishment methods has been widely debated, where opponents of the death penalty often feel that there is the possibility of innocent or wrong execution, the lack of deterrence of violent crime; and religious grounds for opposition to the death penalty. Supporters of capital punishments often feel this to put an end to violent crime, closure to the families and friends o f the victim and term of prison sentence is not an ideal way to punish. These debates across countries and among philosophers have gradually changed the style of handling criminals and punishing criminal activities. Foucauldian Perspectives Foucault brought forth the idea of the social permeation of power relationships inherently linked to resistance (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997). Foucault gives two senses to the word "subject": One is at once under the control of power and one is acting as one's own agent of power, but never is one outside of power (Foucault, 1972) According to Foucault (2005) "The emergence of prison as the form of punishment for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries". He greatly looks are the development of highly refined forms of discipline, of discipline concerned with the smallest and most precise aspects of a person's body. He strongly believed that discipline develops a new economy and politics for bodies and those modern institutions required that bodies must be based on their tasks, as well as for training, observation, and control. His prime argument is that discipline could mould a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which enabled them to carry out their duty within the new forms of economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to today. Foucault challenges the commonly accepted idea that the prison became the consistent form of punishment due to humanitarian concerns of reformists. Hence Foucault's theory of "gentle" punishment made created a way for practice of more generalized and controlled means of punishment better compared to excessive force of the sovereign. In his lecture titled Governmentality, Foucault defines governmentality as "1.The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means