Book Review: From Nuremburg to the Hague: The Future of International Criminal Justice

by: Adam M. Smith

PDF download

Volume 45, Issue 2 (Summer 2004)

Review of From Nuremburg to the Hague: The Future of International Criminal Justice.  Edited by Philippe Sands.  Cambridge University Press: New York, 2003. Pp 192. $20.00 (paper).

The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed the rapid expansion of international criminal law. Though catalyzed by many factors, signicant credit for this remarkable growth can be attributed to two mutually reinforcing phenomena. First, following the bloodshed in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, the international community resurrected the criminal tribunal as a fundamental component in defining and punishing criminal acts committed by state actors. Second, as the decade progressed, national governments became increasingly ready to protect their citizens’ rights by asserting “universal” jurisdiction over foreigners alleged to have violated those rights; most famously, this resulted in the London arrest of Augusto Pinochet. The growing acceptance of and jurisprudence surrounding both international criminal tribunals and universal jurisdiction came together in June 1998 when the United Nations adopted the Rome Statute, which defines the structure of the new International Criminal Court (I.C.C.).

Even if the immediate impetus for creating the I.C.C. was violence both in the Balkans and the African Great Lakes and related domestic judicial activism in the 1990s, the true forebear of the new Court is the Nuremberg Trials [hereinafter “the Trials”] following World War II; it was there that many of the notions later solidified by the Rome Statute were first promulgated, including the concept of “crimes against humanity.” Though the heritage of Nuremberg is evident in the I.C.C., the Trials have proven an uneasy foundation for the new body, with the precedent of Nuremberg’s dual political/judicial purpose causing some observers, and even potential I.C.C. member states, to shy away from endorsing the court. Philippe Sands’s edited work, From Nuremberg to the Hague: The Future of International Criminal Justice, provides a wideranging examination of these issues, analyzing the Nuremberg Trials them-selves, their impact on the ad hoc tribunals organized in response to Rwanda and Yugoslavia, and their likely impact on the potential of the I.C.C.

The book is a collection of live lectures delivered immediately before the Rome Statute was adopted in 1998. The scope of the work is thus limited— both due to the small number of issues covered in live lectures, and its heavy emphasis on English scholars. The small sample is problematic as it provides shallow coverage on issues deserving greater analytic rigor—such as the interaction of national courts with the I.C.C. Further, the lectures are conceptually discrete, with some focusing on the development of international criminal law and others on the mechanics of the I.C.C.; the result is that neither aspect receives exhaustive analysis. Still, the ideas presented are powerful and insightful, and the background stories of the political gamesmanship at Nuremberg and at work in the formation of the I.C.C. are fascinating. For those looking for a primer or refresher on the nature of international criminal tribunals, From Nuremberg to the Hague is a good choice.

This Book Review examines each lecture in turn, analyzing the major arguments made by each scholar. A brief conclusion, which consists of a more diffuse critique of the work as a whole and of the wider project of providing “transitional” justice via judicial means, follows.

To read the full article, please download the PDF above.