When the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established more than twenty years ago, the international community had little experience prosecuting the perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and other atrocities. Unfortunately, there has been ample opportunity to build expertise in the intervening decades; ad hoc tribunals have been established to address past crimes in Cambodia and Sierra Leone, and a formal International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was convened in the aftermath of Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Since 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has assumed responsibility for new prosecutions, pursuing war criminals in countries unable or unwilling to bring them to justice domestically. Yet, after more than two decades of experience, the limits of these courts' capabilities are becoming clear. While they have brought some senior leaders to justice, the scope of the courts' budgets and their enquiries can never reach all--or even most--perpetrators of atrocities. They are physically far removed from the scenes of the crimes they are prosecuting, cannot compel evidence or conduct independent investigations, and are vulnerable to changes in funding and international political support. To overcome these and other difficulties, the international community must place greater emphasis on strengthening the national justice systems of the countries where atrocities have occurred. In this Council Special Report, David Kaye examines existing international justice mechanisms, analyzes how they have succeeded and where they have failed, and explains what reforms national legal systems will require to secure just and peaceful outcomes. Cognizant of the myriad individual challenges facing countries experiencing or emerging from violent conflict, Kaye nevertheless identifies a core set of common needs: political pressure on governments reluctant to prosecute perpetrators; assistance in building legal frameworks and training legal officials; support for investigations, including forensic analysis and security sector reform; and creating belief in the justice system among the local population. To these ends, Kaye outlines several recommendations for U.S. policymakers and their governmental and nongovernmental partners worldwide. Beginning in the United States, Kaye argues that Washington should expand diplomatic and financial support for national justice systems and appoint a senior official to oversee initiatives from the State Department, Justice Department, USAID, and other agencies. Abroad, he calls for the secretary of state to organize a donor conference to agree on funding priorities and responsibilities for the international community, and to establish a coordinating body to ensure that support for national-level justice systems is properly coordinated and informed by best practices. Justice Beyond The Hague provides important insights into the strengths and limitations of current international justice mechanisms. It makes a clear case for increasing support to national legal systems and outlines a variety of ways that the U.S. government can improve and coordinate its aid with others. While there will always be a place for international courts in countries that cannot or will not prosecute perpetrators themselves, this Council Special Report successfully argues that domestic systems can and should play a more meaningful role.

In recent years, the world community has demonstrated a renewed commitment to the pursuit of international criminal justice. In 1993, the United Nations established two ad hoc international tribunals to try those responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Ten years later, the International Criminal Court began its operations and is developing prosecutions in its first two cases (Congo and Uganda). Meanwhile, national and hybrid war crimes tribunals have been established in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, East Timor, Indonesia, Iraq, and Cambodia. Thousands of people have given testimony before these courts. Most have witnessed war crimes, including mass killings, torture, rape, inhumane imprisonment, forced expulsion, and the destruction of homes and villages. For many, testifying in a war crimes trial requires great courage, especially as they are well aware that war criminals still walk the streets of their villages and towns. Yet despite these risks, little attention has been paid to the fate of witnesses of mass atrocity. Nor do we know much about their experiences testifying before an international tribunal or the effect of such testimony on their return to their postwar communities. The first study of victims and witnesses who have testified before an international war crimes tribunal, The Witnesses examines the opinions and attitudes of eighty-seven individuals—Bosnians, Muslims, Serbs, and Croats—who have appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

While resistance to international courts is not new, what is new, or at least newly conceptualized, is the politics of backlash against these institutions. Saving the International Justice Regime: Beyond Backlash against International Courts is at the forefront of this new conceptualization of backlash politics. It brings together theories, concepts and methods from the fields of international law, international relations, human rights and political science and case studies from around the globe to pose - and answer - three questions related to backlash against international courts: What is backlash and what forms does it take? Why do states and elites engage in backlash against international human rights and criminal courts? What can stakeholders and supporters of international justice do to meet these contemporary challenges?

This book examines how historical narratives of mass atrocites are constructed and contested within international criminal courts. In particular, it looks into the important question of what tends to be foregrounded, and what tends to be excluded, in these narratives.

The aim of this new collection of essays is to engage in analysis beyond the familiar victor’s justice critiques. The editors have drawn on authors from across the world — including Australia, Japan, China, France, Korea, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — with expertise in the fields of international humanitarian law, international criminal law, Japanese studies, modern Japanese history, and the use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The diverse backgrounds of the individual authors allow the editors to present essays which provide detailed and original analyses of the Tokyo Trial from legal, philosophical and historical perspectives. Several of the essays in the collection are based on the authors’ extensive archival research in Japan, Australia, the United States and New Zealand, providing rich insights into Japanese societal attitudes towards the Trial, biological experimentation by the Japanese Army in China, as well as the trial of Korean prison guards and prosecutions for rape and sexual assault in the post-war period. Some of the essays deal with particular participants in the Trial, examining the role of individual judges, and the selection of defendants and the decision not to prosecute the Emperor. Other essays analyse the Trial from a legal perspective, and address its impact on concepts such as command responsibility, conspiracy and war crimes. The majority of the essays seek to identify and address some of the ‘forgotten crimes’ in the Tokyo Trial. These include crimes committed in China and Korea (particularly the activities of the infamous Unit 731), crimes committed against comfort women, and crimes associated with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the conventional firebombing of other Japanese cities and the illicit drug trade in China. Finally, the collection includes a number of essays which consider the importance of studying the Tokyo Trial and its contemporary relevance. These issues include an examination of the way in which academics have ‘written’ the Trial over the last 60 years, and an analysis of some of the lessons that can be drawn for international trials in the future.

The United States incarcerates far more people than any other country in the world, at rates nearly ten times higher than other liberal democracies. Indeed, while the U.S. is home to 5 percent of the world's population, it contains nearly 25 percent of its prisoners. But the extent of American cruelty goes beyond simply locking people up. At every stage of the criminal justice process - plea bargaining, sentencing, prison conditions, rehabilitation, parole, and societal reentry - the U.S. is harsher and more punitive than other comparable countries. In Unusually Cruel, Marc Morjé Howard argues that the American criminal justice and prison systems are exceptional - in a truly shameful way. Although other scholars have focused on the internal dynamics that have produced this massive carceral system, Howard provides the first sustained comparative analysis that shows just how far the U.S. lies outside the norm of established democracies. And, by highlighting how other countries successfully apply less punitive and more productive policies, he provides plausible solutions to addressing America's criminal justice quagmire.