War Crimes Research Office

Director, Prof. Michael P. Scharf
Deputy Director, Prof. Carol Taylor Fox

Established in 2002 and supported by annual grants from the Open Society Institute, the War Crimes Research Office is the focal point of several unique programs focusing on accountability for violations of international humanitarian law, which are listed below..

War Crimes Research Lab
Each semester, twenty students enroll in the War Crimes Research Lab, in which they undertake legal research for the prosecutors and judges of International Criminal Court in The Hague; the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia in Phnom Penh; the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown; the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha; and the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad.

International Criminal Tribunal Externship Program
More Case students have done summer internships at the international tribunals (funded by a Cox Center grant) than any other law school in the world. In addition, Case law students receive 12 credit hours and a Cox Center Fellowship grant for undertaking a semester-long internship at one of the International Tribunals.

Annual War Crimes Research Symposium The Cox Center hosts an annual War Crimes Research Symposium, bringing in two-dozen of the foremost international humanitarian law and international criminal law experts in the world to discuss a cutting-edge issue related to the prosecution of war crimes. Articles generated from the symposia are published in the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law.

War Crimes Research Portal
The War Crimes Research Office maintains the War Crimes Research Portal, which contains the text of over 170 memoranda students have prepared for the international tribunals, as well as links to a thousand web sites related to international criminal law.

Grotian Moment: War Crimes Trial Blog
Established in September 2005, the award-winning “Grotian Moment Blog” features essays by a panel of experts on developments related to ongoing war crimes trials, as well as newspaper articles, biographies of the trial participants, an archive of law review articles, and documents related to the tribunals. The “Grotian Moment Blog” was the top-ranked international law blog in the 2006 Weblog Awards.

War Crimes Prosecution Watch
Established in 2006, War Crimes Prosecution Watch is a biweekly electronic newsletter, which goes out to 15,000 subscribers. The e-newsletter is prepared by Case student editors and features articles and documents related to war crimes investigations and trials throughout the globe.

The Cleveland Principles
Panelists who participated in the 2005 War Crimes Research Symposium, “Torture and the War on Terror,” drafted a document known as “The Cleveland Principles on the Treatment of Detainees in the Global War on Terrorism,” which was subsequently endorsed by 200 leading experts and provided to the U.S. Congress.