Courtney Hillebrecht, associate professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Forsythe Family Program on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, had two journal articles published in May and June of 2020.
"International Criminal Accountability and the Domestic Politics of Resistance: Case Studies from Kenya and Lebanon" was published in May in Law and Society Review.
Contemporary international criminal law suggests that head of state immunity does not extend to atrocity crimes, but the executive's office continues to be the safest place for suspected perpetrators. Moreover, indicted suspects can use the threat of international accountability to win democratically contested elections. This article asks how suspects and their surrogates translate an indictment from an international criminal tribunal into an electoral victory and suggests that the path between an indictment and electoral victory unfolds in one of two ways: (1) the consolidation of existing coalitions around the indicted suspects and their allies; or (2) the creation of new coalitions that span existing cleavages.
"Overlapping international human rights institutions: Introducing the Women's Rights Recommendations Digital Database (WR2D2)" was published in June in Journal of Peace Research.
With the proliferation of the international human rights regime, states confront a dense set of institutional commitments. Our knowledge of the influence of these commitments is limited for two reasons. First, scholars largely focus on the effect of treaty ratification on states' human rights behavior, but states engage with these institutions after ratification via regional human rights court rulings and UN recommendations. Second, scholars often examine these institutions in isolation. The institutions do not operate in isolation, however, nor do states necessarily consider the requests they receive from these institutions independently. In this article, we introduce the Women's Rights Recommendations Digital Database (WR2D2), which maps the various recommendations international women's rights institutions make on European states.
