Search results
War crimes trials before international tribunals 6 War crimes trials before international tribunals: legality and legitimacy Dominic McGoldrick I Introduction An assessment of the historical place of any trials requires both a micro and a macro analysis. The microanalysis focuses on the internal processes and procedures of the trials. The macroanalysis focuses on the broader political and historical context. Both levels of analysis can review issues of legality and legitimacy.1 This essay presents a comparative critique of war crimes trials before the
Lawyers had been producing reports of trials and appellate proceedings in order to understand the law and practices of the Westminster courts since the Middle Ages, and printed reports had appeared in the late fifteenth century. This book considers trials in the regular English criminal courts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It also considers the contribution of criminal lawyers in developing the modern rules of evidence. The book explores the influence of scientific and pseudoscientific knowledge on Victorian insanity trials and trials for homosexual offences, respectively. The British Trials Collection contains the only readily accessible and near-verbatim accounts of civil trials from the 1760s, 1770s, and 1780s, decades crucial to understanding how the rules of evidence developed. It might be thought that Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA) or its regulations would have introduced trials in camera. The book presents a comparative critique of war crimes trials before the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo and the International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. The first spy trial by court martial after the legal change in 1915 was that of Robert Rosenthal, who was German. The book also considers the principal features of the first war crimes trial of the twenty-first century in terms of personnel and procedures, the alleged crimes, and issues of legality and legitimacy. It also speculates on the narratives or non-narratives of the trial and how these may impact on the professed aims and objectives of the litigation.
examine international trials for war crimes – what are sometimes referred to as breaches of international humanitarian law – and human rights violations. The twentieth century witnessed the creation of an apparently impressive range of international tribunals with authority to consider such offences: the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the African Court of Human Rights. All of these, however, adjudicated state responsibility for violations of international law; they did not have
The trial of Slobodan Milosevic 9 The trial of Slobodan Milosevic: a twenty-first century trial? Dominic McGoldrick At 10.02 am on Tuesday, 3 July 2001, Slobodan Milosevic made an initial appearance before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).1 He wore a blue suit, a blue shirt, and a tie in the national colours of Serbia. He was the first former head of state in history to be prosecuted for war crimes by an international tribunal.2 This image of international criminal justice was flashed across the world’s media.3 The humbling
Lawson 02_Lawson 08/09/2010 13:36 Page 52 2 ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’: war crimes prosecutions and the emergence of Holocaust metanarratives On April 11 1961 Adolf Eichmann stood for the first time before a court in Jerusalem charged with being the Third Reich’s ‘executive arm for the extermination of the Jewish people’.1 The case against him was outlined over the next four months, and constituted, in effect, a history of the Holocaust performed in front of the world’s media, indeed it was televised live in several different countries.2 Over 700 journalists
, associations supporting convicted war criminals and local groups opposing such plans. In this context it was the issue of Japanese war criminals, their trials, their fate and their place within the nation’s public discourse which assumed a central role. The three categories of war crimes established at Nuremberg for dealing with Nazi atrocities also served as the template for trials of
head of the British mission in Tokyo, Alvary Gascoigne, and the Foreign Office were annoyed that Patrick refused MacArthur’s offer without prior consultation.21 MacArthur’s appointment of the Australian, Webb, softened the image of American dominance of the deliberations. However, Webb’s appointment was regrettable in several ways. The principal legal objection was that Webb had already been involved in investigating alleged Japanese war crimes, including cannibalism, in New Guinea on behalf of the Australian government. Surely this alone should have disqualified
American campaigners on behalf of stricken Jewry active both during and after the war, represented a riposte to those who wished to see the persecution of Jews universally. If the efforts of this group during war had been directed towards persuading a recalcitrant watching world to rescue Jews, then in its aftermath they were directed towards ensuring that the judgement of both History and war crimes trials recorded Jews as specific victims of Nazi policy as a result of their specific place in the Nazi imagination. As The Black Book stated boldly in its indictment
Reagan to a cemetery in Bitburg where SS troops were buried. This prompted the ‘historians’ dispute’ (Historikerstreit), a debate among prominent West German historians about whether the Holocaust can be regarded as a unique phenomenon. Significantly, Ernst Nolte, one of the main protagonists in the debate, drew parallels between the victims of the Holocaust and the German expellees, maintaining that both groups were deserving of sympathy, an argument his critics saw as an attempt to relativise Nazi war crimes.6 The collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe
war crime in their prosecutions for crimes against humanity which included acts of sexual violence.14 Moreover, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, rape and sexual slavery, along- Bosnia: genocidal rape and its children 153 side forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilisation and similarly grave acts of sexual violence have now been recognised as both crimes against humanity and war crimes.15 In addition, since then these issues have featured in a variety of UN resolutions, detailing the member states’ obligations relating to