Document Type

Article

Publication Title

ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law

Abstract

How will historians and others judge the Balkan war crimes tribunal? In my brief time, I would like to indicate how the prosecution of Tadic, the first case before that tribunal, has raised some doubts about that body's legitimacy and likely legacy. It is clear the creators of this tribunal attempted to correct some of the obvious problems with Nuremberg and Tokyo. The legitimacy of those earlier prosecutions had been attacked on a number of grounds: 1) as revenge trials subject to double standards wrought and conducted by the victors against the vanquished; 2) for violating the rights of defendants through such questionable practices as trials in absentia and unfair evidentiary rules that subjected defendants to trial by document subject to no appeal or review with little attempt to equalize the opportunities between prosecution and defense; 3) for violating the rule against ex post facto imposition of criminal liability, principally through charges invoking crimes against aggression, crimes against humanity, and for membership in criminal organizations; 4) for dishonoring the memory of Holocaust victims by artificially limiting all prosecutions to crimes committed in the course of aggressive war by one state against another thereby denying victims of German atrocities, particularly against the Jews and gypsies, from presenting the world with an accurate picture of the nature of the Holocaust (both during the War and before) and the very real complicity of ordinary German citizens.

First Page

613

Volume

3

Publication Date

1997

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