Nternational and Domestic Efforts in Human Rights Protection This particular batch of readings was highly interesting, and very educational. Collectively, these readings explored various notions and reasons for the process of international courts attempting to learn more about human rights criminal activity predominantly from an international perspective. Individually, these readings detailed various aspects of truth commissions and of the International Criminal Court, both of which are fairly influential in the investigation of previously existent human rights violations.

Victor Peskin's 2009 article, "Caution and Confrontation in the International Criminal Court's Pursuit of Accountability in Uganda and Sudan" provided a clear look at some of the internal processes and challenges faced by the ICC's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo. In particular, this article focused on why it was advantageous for the prosecutor to initially attempt conciliatory stances about the regimes he was looking to attempt to pursue human rights violation cases in, Uganda and Sudan, and why it was that this attorney was then forced to utilize more stringent measures of prosecution ("confrontational") (Peskin 655) to aid his work. The primary conclusions that one can gather from this article are that essentially, the ICC has no formal army or source of power of its own (particularly due to the lack of cooperation from the United States) and is dependent upon the host nation of its investigation for information...

In that case, the prosecutor and others who engage in this sort of role have a very difficult time fulfilling their job obligations.
The link between Peskin's article and that of Jaymie Mayerfield, who composed 2002's "Who Shall Be Judge?: The United States, the International Criminal Court, and the Global enforcement of Human Rights" was extremely palpable after just a few paragraphs. Mayerfield was able to explain the infrastructure that the ICC was based upon, and detailed more of the history of this organization from the perspective of both its supporters as well as its detractors. Moreover, the author explored the inherent conflict between this organization and its inception (which was in 2002) and the United States, which initially supported it and then has refused to do so ever since voting against it. The conclusion that one can draw from this article, which was meticulously researched by the author and even drew on more than a little theoretical modeling from John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, is that the U.S. both was and still is afraid that its authority to commit many of the violations of human rights would be challenged if it formally enrolled in the ICC. The fact that this powerful nation has chosen not to involve itself in the efforts of the ICC sheds a considerable amount of doubt as to the United States' "unidirectional" (Mayerfield 93) attempt to regulate human rights violations, especially in light of its war on…