Case makes war crimes information public through new Internet portal
War Crimes Research Portal provides information never before this easily accessible
For immediate release: March 31, 2004
Information about humanitarian law and war crime trials, such as the one for Yugoslavian's leader Slobodan Milosevic, just became easier to access through the Internet.
 The Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University's School of Law has launched its new War Crimes Research Portal: http://law.case.edu/War-Crimes-Research-Portal. The War Crimes Research Portal contains over a thousand links to Web sites related to international humanitarian law, arranged alphabetically by subject area and including a summary of the content of each site—information that was never this easily accessible before.
The Portal also contains "instant analyses" articles written each month by experts around the world on the hottest topics in international criminal law.
"The portal is one of the most comprehensive and usable research sites related to international humanitarian law and international criminal tribunals on the Internet," said Michael Scharf, director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center and professor of law at Case.
Scharf added that international humanitarian law is one of the fastest growing and most important areas of international law today.
The portal's most unique feature is that it reproduces the text of over 120 research memoranda on issues pending before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. These lengthy and exhaustively documented memos were produced at the request of the international prosecutors by students enrolled in the Case Law School War Crimes Research Lab, a program supported by annual grants from the Open Society Institute and supervised by Scharf.
The memos cover virtually every major legal issue that has arisen in the course of the international trials, from the contours of command responsibility to the definition of genocide. The memos can be searched by date published, by title or by keywords.
"The materials available at our War Crimes Research Portal will be invaluable to the thousands of practitioners and academics who will soon be working with or writing about the new permanent international criminal court," Scharf said.
With support from a permanent endowment from the Gund Foundation, the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Law School has developed one of the most ambitious and comprehensive international law programs in the nation.
For information and updates about the portal and the activities of the Cox Center, call Scharf at 216-368-3299, send an e-mail to coxcenter@case.edu or visit the center's website at http://law.cwru.edu/centers/cox.
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