Chapter 4 explores how Sigismund von Herberstein used the visual in his travel account. Working with an accomplished engraver from Nuremberg, Augustin Hirschvogel, Herberstein devised relatively few illustrations for his account. But they were carefully linked to his text and proved widely influential. His portrait of Vasilii III shows evidence of Hirschvogel’s Habsburg portraits done in Nuremberg, but reflects Herberstein’s acquaintance with the Grand Prince. Perhaps most important was Herberstein’s map (1546), considered for the next few decades the most accurate map of Muscovy. The chapter then explores the imagery that Herberstein added in subsequent editions and concludes by tracking how his text, map and imagery traveled into new, sometimes pirated, editions and locations after his death in 1566.

The ICC launched in 2002 to judge cases against individuals accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. It is unique among international institutions in this book in that it imposes its obligations upon individual persons rather than governments. This chapter shows the powers and limits on the authority of the ICC to punish people for large-scale atrocities. The practical power of the ICC is shaped by both the difficulty of apprehending people and the active work of those who wish to remain insulated from accountability.

In this chapter, I introduce the main questions I seek to answer in this book, which are: what gives international courts the authority to punish individuals for international crimes, and under what conditions may courts legitimately exercise that authority? I give an overview of the history of international criminal justice, of my methodological assumptions, and of the arguments I make in the individual chapters.

How does international law protect human rights?  We trace the development of human rights, focusing on the international response to the atrocities of World War II and the rapid pace of human rights conventions.  We demonstrate how the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights started a wave of other conventions designed to codify the treatment to which every human is entitled.  Not every state can achieve the wide array of protections these documents outline, but the UN has established methods for reporting violations that provide some minor satisfaction. The last half of the chapter is devoted to a discussion of regional human rights mechanisms, focusing on the European, Inter-American, and African systems and noting their jurisdictional differences. Finally, the development of mechanisms to respond to genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity are detailed, including the criminal tribunals set up for specific atrocities and the International Criminal Court.

An initial glimpse into the ICC courtroom introduces the lead participants on the first day of the Court’s first trial. This chapter contrasts the modern courtroom in The Hague with culturally distant conflicts arising in the Congo, which tested the Court’s stamina for implementing international legal norms. The Court’s legal mission was formulated in the Rome Statute, a treaty accepted after 1998 by some 120 member states, building on earlier court models from Nuremberg, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. Its moral scope contained broad ideals: promoting long-term peace and justice by prosecuting those deemed most responsible for atrocities that “shock the conscience of humanity.” Among the ICC’s innovations was a commitment to elevate victims of mass atrocities, enabling their active participation in trial proceedings. The Court’s overall design included a series of tensions and conflicts that would emerge during the years covered by the Congo trials. In addition to the cultural contrast between The Hague and the Congo, there were tensions between the strictly legal courtroom proceedings and the inevitable political entanglements facing an international court.

This chapter considers the activities of Polish War Crimes Office under the authority of the Provisional Government of National Unity (Warsaw) and the contribution various jurists associated with the War Crimes Office made to the work of the Polish delegation at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. It is argued that Polish jurists, through the submission of an indictment and liaison with prosecutors at Nuremberg, sought to ensure that Polish concerns were given due consideration. The final part of the chapter analyses Polish Charge Files submitted to the UNWCC during 1946 and discusses reasons for the relatively low rate of Charge File submissions in that year.

An initial glimpse into the ICC courtroom introduces the lead participants on the first day of the Court’s first trial. This chapter contrasts the modern courtroom in The Hague with culturally distant conflicts arising in the Congo, which tested the Court’s stamina for implementing international legal norms. The Court’s legal mission was formulated in the Rome Statute, a treaty accepted after 1998 by some 120 member states, building on earlier court models from Nuremberg, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. Its moral scope contained broad ideals: promoting long-term peace and justice by prosecuting those deemed most responsible for atrocities that “shock the conscience of humanity.” Among the ICC’s innovations was a commitment to elevate victims of mass atrocities, enabling their active participation in trial proceedings. The Court’s overall design included a series of tensions and conflicts that would emerge during the years covered by the Congo trials. In addition to the cultural contrast between The Hague and the Congo, there were tensions between the strictly legal courtroom proceedings and the inevitable political entanglements facing an international court.

Hans Kelsen’s interventions in the law of the Nuremberg trials have remained unexplored with the exception of notes in passim or a couple of brief studies. International criminal law, is true, was not Kelsen’s main object of study. However, the events culminating in Nuremberg, both the shocking Nazi policies and that Kelsen was an émigré in the United States were instrumental to precipitate his close engagement with international criminal law during the dawn years between 1942 and 1945. This chapter introduces the man and his ideas, traces elements of the pure theory that relate to the principle of individual criminal responsibility and, with the help of hitherto unknown archival material, describes for the first time Kelsen’s personal participation in the preparations of Nuremberg and the history behind his absence from the International Military Tribunal. The chapter concludes with a selection of two aspects of Kelsen’s activities as a legal advisor for the US War Crimes Commission: first, his insistence on the need for an international treaty as the legal basis of the IMT in order to avoid victors’ justice and problems of jurisdiction; second, his contribution towards the inclusion of individual criminal responsibility in the London Agreement.

Henri Donnedieu de Vabres is a fascinating but cryptic figure within the circles associated with international criminal justice in the interwar period. One of the most active participants in the 1920s ebullience around international criminal law as President of the AIDP and member of the ILA, he eventually became the French judge at Nuremberg as well as a member of the ILC and the drafting committee for the genocide convention. For all that model trajectory, Donnedieu de Vabres had a unique and somewhat iconoclastic view of the fundamental purpose of international criminal justice. His first intellectual love was for private international law and throughout his career he saw international criminal law as fundamentally a conflict of laws issue, as a result of the worldwide movement of criminals. His view of an international criminal court was very much aligned with the AIDP’s early suggestion that it should be a criminal chamber of the PCIJ to adjudicate disputes between states over the exercise of criminal jurisdiction. He was an odd fit for the Nuremberg tribunal, where he was mostly silent but took a strong and surprising line during deliberations. He remains a neglected but pivotal figure in the early development of international criminal justice.

Chapter 2 dwells upon the operationalization of the reparative dimension of international criminal justice at the international level, with a focus on the historical evolution of reparations by international criminal courts and tribunals prior to the ICC, and the reparative justice model devised by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The goal of this chapter is to retrace the diverse models in place in international criminal tribunals in regards to reparations, from a model that excludes reparations from criminal proceedings to one that has a role for victims and encompasses reparative dimensions of justice. Concerning the latter, this chapter analyzes in-depth the reparation regime developed at the ECCC, including the role of parties civiles, and the rich developing case law of the court regarding reparations. This chapter provides a careful analysis of all decisions on reparations and submissions of the parties, it engages with critical scholarship on the system developed at the ECCC, the impact of reparation orders for victims and discusses practical and policy considerations of the types of reparation that can be ordered (collective and moral reparations). It also analyses the partie civile system under which the ECCC operates and discusses the contribution of the evolving case law to the development of reparative justice for international crimes.

This chapter provides an overview of the book in terms of concepts and content. It introduces the reader to the questions of what accountability for corporate complicity in human rights violations is, why they take place, and when, where, and how they unfold. It also explores obstacles that have blocked accountability efforts. The chapter sets out the concepts of “corporate,” “complicity,” “accountability,” and “transitional justice.” It examines when and why there is need for accountability for these types of violations.It further considers where corporate accountability could take place, in courts and in truth commissions. The chapter sets out the argument for how accountability processes have occurred, their reliance on civil society demand and institutional innovators to overcome the absence of international pressure and the obstacles posed by a powerful business veto. It uses these factors to present the “justice from below” model used in the book. It suggests that the model functions like Archimedes’ Lever in putting the right tools in weak hands to lift the weight of international human rights accountability. A chapter outline is also provided.

Is it ethical when doctors breach their pregnant patients’ confidentiality? Is it legal? What about HIPAA (properly known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996)? Are there different rules for pregnant women than for men? These are some of the questions women ask me after I give a talk. I understand this bewilderment and, for many, fear. At the heart of their questions resides this chilling thought: Could this happen to me or my daughter? Depending on where they live, the answer may be yes. And, increasingly, wealth will not save them. As this Chapter explains, physicians owe their patients care, confidentiality, loyalty, and trust, and the principle that undergirds all of this – the fiduciary relationship – is not contingent on the sex of the patient. However, with increased pressure from state legislatures and prosecutors, some doctors and nurses have abrogated their responsibilities to their patients. Among them, some are genuinely fearful that unless they adhere to whatever law enforcement demands of them, they may lose their licenses to practice medicine. Some of these doctors are genuinely ambivalent about their duties. These doctors tell me they feel powerless.

On 26 July 1946, in court room 600 of the majestic ‘Palace of Justice’ (Justizpalast) in Nuremburg, Germany, Sir Hartley Shawcross (1902–2003), the British Chief prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal, presented his closing arguments on the 187th day in the case against the twenty-two high-ranking Nazi defendants, including Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess. The British team had met with French professor René Cassin (1887–1976) in preparation for the landmark trial,1 and Shawcross’ speech had in large part been drafted by British law professor Hersch Lauterpacht, though he went off-script to include the charge of ‘genocide’, the term coined by Polish legal activist Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959).2 As the British case also covered the charges of ‘Crimes against Peace’, Shawcross’ arguments would have also touched upon the work of Soviet international law scholar Aron N. Trainin (1883–1957), author of ‘Hitlerite Responsibility under International Law’, a small pamphlet that apparently had been read by many in preparation for the trial in Nuremberg3 and which, uncharacteristically for Soviet discourse by the end of the war and after, was very explicit in its treatment of the Jewish identity of many of the victims of the Holocaust.4

Borrowing Gerry Simpson’s taxonomy, it was and remains common to think of the Soviet Union as both a ‘great power’ and an ‘outlaw state’. Some historical accounts portray Soviet law as elaborate, specific and complex; but simultaneously, others portray ‘Soviet law’ as a sham. This essay argues that the Soviet approach to Cold War international law hews closer to the former image than the latter. It appears that Soviet faith in international law grew over the course of the Cold War, rather than diminished. This essay is a tentative sketch of the transformation of Soviet faith in law over the course of the Cold War.