When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fully approved the Pfizer‐BioNTech Covid‐19 vaccine for people sixteen and older, questions arose. Parents, pediatricians, and the media wondered whether Covid‐19 vaccines could be used off‐label—and whether they should be. The American Academy of Pediatrics cautioned against pediatric off‐label use of the vaccine, and the vaccine provider agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears to prohibit it. After briefly contextualizing ethical and legal precedents regarding off‐label use, we offer an analysis of the ethical permissibility of and considerations for pediatric off‐label Covid‐19 vaccination based on individual benefits, risks, and available alternatives. Our analysis challenges the ethics of a blanket prohibition on off‐label pediatric Covid‐19 vaccination, as it limits clinician ability to provide care they may determine to be clinically and ethically appropriate. At the same time, our analysis acknowledges that Covid‐19 creates population‐level ethical considerations that are at times in tension with individual health interests .

In this article, I consider the possibilities and limitations for testimonial justice in an international criminal courtroom. I begin by exploring the relationship between epistemology and criminal law, and consider how testimony contributes to the goals of truth and justice. I then assess the susceptibility of international criminal courts to the two harms of testimonial injustice: epistemic harm to the speaker, and harm to the truth-seeking process. I conclude that international criminal courtrooms are particularly susceptible to perpetrating testimonial injustice. Hearers in the international criminal courtroom should practice testimonial justice, but the institution is not structured in a way that can prevent every instance of testimonial injustice.

In this article, I argue that we need a better understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of the current debates in international law surrounding hate speech and inchoate crimes. I construct a theoretical basis for speech acts as incitement to genocide, distinguishing these speech acts from speech as genocide and speech denying genocide by integrating international law with concepts drawn from speech act theory and moral philosophy. I use the case drawn on by many commentators in this area of international criminal law, the trial of media executives for the roles they played in the Rwandan genocide through public speech acts by media entities insulting an ethnic group or advocating violence against an ethnic group. Each of these men were institutional leaders and were charged with using their positions within Rwandan society to distribute what I call genocidal hate speech, genocidal incitement speech, and genocidal participation speech. I argue for a distinction between these three types of speech, and a difference in individual criminal liability for the dissemination of each type of speech. I also argue that there should be a difference in individual criminal liability for speech acts within the context of an ongoing or recent genocide, and speech acts that can be separated from a site of mass violence.

In the last two decades there has been a meteoric rise of international criminal tribunals and courts and also a strengthening chorus of critics against them. Today it is hard to find strong defenders of international criminal tribunals and courts. This book attempts such a defense against an array of critics. It offers a nuanced defense, accepting many criticisms but arguing that the idea of international criminal tribunals can be defended as providing the fairest way to deal with mass atrocity crimes in a global arena. Fairness and moral legitimacy will be at the heart of this defense. The authors take up the economic and political arguments that have been powerfully expressed, as well as arguments about sovereignty, punishment, responsibility, and evidence; but in the end they show that these arguments do not defeat the idea of international criminal courts and tribunals.

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