Trying War Crimes in International Courts

Extract

Dr. Kauffman, friends. I am delighted to be back on my old stamping grounds at Yale Law School, which I attended some half-century ago in an era when World War II had been successfully completed and terrorism had not yet been defined as a global threat. The Nuremberg Tribunal was ongoing during part of my time at law school but I'm ashamed to say few of us paid much attention to it. We did not foresee any need to learn its lessons in our “brave new world.” But as we are so often reminded, those who do not heed the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them, and evil has reappeared in new guises over the past 50 years, requiring new responses on an international level. So fast forwarding to the present, I have recently returned from two years service as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the Hague; this was after twenty years as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Yugoslav Tribunal has been in existence for more than 9 years and I believe its history and accomplishments are a worthy subject for scrutiny, especially in light of the new International Criminal Court just getting off the ground. I am therefore pleased to share some observations on the Tribunal's successes and problems, and to offer some modest recommendations to future tribunals.