Sunday, August 3, 2014

Lively debate in Brazil over civilians and military jurisdiction

Diario de Pernambuco has this useful summary of the complicated state of play on the contentious question of military court jurisdiction over civilians in peacetime. The matter is one of the issues being addressed by the Transitional Justice Working Group. One interesting statistic: civilians constitute 13.5% of defendants in military court cases in the period 2002-12. At present, the Supreme Military Tribunal consists of 10 military judges and five civilian judges. Would the concerns raised by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights be allayed if only civilian judges were permitted to act in cases where the accused is a civilian?

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