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Quantitative research into the effectiveness of the UN human rights treaty bodies (UNTBs) in eliciting remedial responses from states is impeded by a lack of usable data on how states respond to their decisions. The new Treaty Body Views Dataset (TBVD) aims to fill this gap. It comprises details on all published decisions in individual complaints cases issued by the UNTBs between 1979 and 2019 and matches these with information on their state of compliance. The TBVD can be used for research on the activities of the treaty bodies, the nature of the decisions themselves, or state behavior following a decision. An empirical application illustrates how the TBVD can advance knowledge about the factors that correlate with compliance with adverse UNTB decisions. Results show that the likelihood of implementation hinges critically on decision-level characteristics, and reveal differences and similarities between compliance with UNTB decisions and regional human rights court judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of fair and impartial criteria for judging those accused of international crimes is one of the most critical issues facing the international community and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Are the resources, experience, and moral force so weighted in favor of the international community that the accused cannot obtain a fair contest? Are international criminal trials legalistic exercises that cloak a victor's justice, or do such courts premise their decisions on fair criteria? Data on ICTY verdicts and punishment of convicted war criminals show that the ICTY judges follow a "legal" model and that punishment is based primarily on the gravity of the crimes committed and the defendant's level of responsibility in the political and military chain of command. Political factors largely do not explain verdicts or sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tested the hypothesis that partisanship influences judgments of fairness and trustworthiness in the mediation of social conflict. Subjects evaluated third patty proposals for resolving the conflict in Jerusalem. A 2 x 2 x 4 factorial design examined (1) partisanship of the subject, either partisan (pro-Israeli) or nonpartisan (neutral); (2) content bias of third party proposals, where the substance of the proposal was either (a) pro-Israeli or (b) evenhanded; and (3) source bias, where the third party was labeled as being (a) pro-Israeli, (b) pro-Palestinian, (c) neutral, or (d) of unknown persuasion. Analyses of judgments of fairness and third patty trustworthiness indicated differences between partisan and nonpartisan subjects in self-serving bias and underlying dynamics in judgments, Partisans used favorableness of the proposals to judge the trustworthiness of the third party, independent of evenhandedness of the proposal, whereas evenhandedness was the criterion for nonpartisans. Nonpartisans trusted the neutral third party and partisans trusted the pro-Israeli third party regardless of proposal fairness, Partisans showed a cushioning effect of third party characteristics: a pro-Israeli third patty who made an evenhanded proposal (relatively unpalatable to the pro-Israeli subjects) was trusted more than a pro-Palestinian third party who made the same proposal. The results highlight practical problems in mediation where the third party may need the mist not only of the disputing parties but also the trust of nonpartisan others. Evenhanded third party behavior that may impress nonpartisans is likely to he seen as biased mediation by disputants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses conflict and its resolution in the Supreme Court. Behavior of Supreme Court justices indicating conflict and its resolution constitutes a significant sector of activity that is called law in action. It is surprising that the subject has received little scholarly attention. The main reason for this, apparently, is that only a few persons are in a position directly to observe decision-making in the Courts--the justices themselves and to some extent their law clerks and a few others--and they are not inclined to write about it, at least not systematically. Conflict in the Supreme Court is inevitable as the justices attempt to fulfill their primary political role--the settlement of disputes brought before them. It is due largely to the kinds of cases that come to the Court, those for which legal guidelines are unclear and those which involve basic societal conflicts. Such cases make the justices' values salient in decision-making, and therefore value disparity is a major source of intracourt conflict. Another major source is disparity of conceptions of the basic judicial role. Other sources of conflict include the justices' personalities.