Advocates of theNuremberg legacy emphasize the positive impact of the individualization of responsibility and the establishment of an historical record through judicial procedures forwar crimes. This legacy has been cited in the context of the establishment and operation of the UN ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals in the 1990s, as well

For decades the history of the US Military Tribunals at Nuremberg (NMT) has been eclipsed by the first Nuremberg trial—the International Military Tribunal or IMT. The dominant interpretation—neatly summarized in the ubiquitous formula of “Subsequent Trials”—ignores the unique historical and legal character of the NMT trials, which differed significantly from that of their predecessor. The NMT trials marked a decisive shift both in terms of analysis of the Third Reich and conceptualization of international criminal law. This volume is the first comprehensive examination of the NMT and brings together diverse perspectives from the fields of law, history, and political science, exploring the genesis, impact, and legacy of the twelve Military Tribunals held at Nuremberg between 1946 and 1949.

Rebuilding societies where conflict has occurred is rarely a simple process. Where conflict has been accompanied by gross and systematic violations of human rights, the procedure becomes very controversial. The traditional debate on "transitional justice" sought to balance justice, truth, accountability, peace, and stability. The appearance of impunity for past crimes undermines confidence in new democratic structures and casts doubt upon commitments to human rights. Yet the need to consolidate peace sometimes resulted in reluctance on the part of authorities --both local and international --to confront suspected perpetrators of human rights violations, especially when they are a part of a peace process. Experience in many regions of the world therefore suggested a tradeoff between peace and justice. But that is changing. There is a growing consensus that some forms of justice and accountability are integral to --rather than in tension with --peace and stability. This volume considers whether we are truly going beyond the transitional justice debate. It brings together eminent scholars and practitioners with direct experience in some of the most challenging cases of international justice, and illustrates that justice and accountability remain complex, but not mutually exclusive, ideals.

This volume considers the dynamic relations between the contemporary practices of international criminal tribunals and the ways in which competing histories, politics and discourses are re-imagined and re-constructed in the former Yugoslavia and beyond. There are two innovative aspects of the book - one is the focus on narratives of justice and their production, another is in its comparative perspective. While legal scholars have tended to analyze transitional justice and the international war tribunals in terms of their success or failure in establishing the facts of war crimes, this volume goes beyond mere facts and investigates how the courts create a symbolic space within which competing narratives of crimes, perpetrators and victims are produced, circulated and contested. It analyzes how international criminal law and the courts gather, and in turn produce, knowledge about societies in war, their histories and identities, and their relations to the wider world. Moreover, the volume situates narratives of transitional justice in former Yugoslavia both within specific national spaces - such as Serbia, and Bosnia - and beyond the Yugoslav. In this way it also considers experiences from other countries and other times (post-World War II) to offer a sounding board for re-thinking the meanings of transitional justice and institutions within former Yugoslavia. Included in the volume's coverage is a look at the Rwandan tribunals, the trials of Charles Taylor, Radovan Karadzic, the Srebrenica genocide, and other war crimes and criminals in the Yugoslav. Finally, it frames all of those narratives and experiences within the global dynamics of legal, social and geo-political transformations, making it an excellent resource for social science researchers, human rights activists, those interested in the former Yugoslavia and international relations, and legal scholars.

Transitional justice is a burgeoning field of scholarly inquiry. Yet while the transitional justice literature is replete with claims about the benefits of criminal trials, too often these claims lack an empirical basis and hence remain unproven. While there has been much discussion about whether criminal trials can aid reconciliation, the extent to which they actually do so in practice remains under-explored. This book investigates the relationship between criminal trials and reconciliation, through a particular focus on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Using detailed empirical data – in the form of qualitative interviews and observations from five years of fieldwork – to assess and analyze the ICTY’s impact on reconciliation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia and Kosovo, International Trials and Reconciliation: Assessing the Impact of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia argues that reconciliation is not a realistic aim for a criminal court. They are, Janine Clark argues, only one part of a rich tapestry of justice, which must also include non-retributive transitional justice processes and mechanisms. Challenging many of the common yet untested assumptions about the benefits of criminal trials, this innovative and extremely timely monograph will be invaluable for those with interests in the theory and practice of transitional justice.

Through an in-depth case study, Some Kind of Justice offers fresh insights about two questions now the subject of robust debate: What goals can we plausibly assign to international criminal tribunals? What factors determine the impact of distant courts on societies that have seen vicious violence? The book offers a timely and original account of how an international war crimes tribunal affects local communities and the factors that shape its changing impact over time. It explores the influence of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), launched in 1993 by the UN Security Council at the height of ethnic conflict accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia, in two countries directly affected by its work. One, Bosnia-Herzegovina, experienced soaring levels of ethnic violence, culminating in the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica. The wartime government of the other country, Serbia, plunged the region into conflict. Operating until the end of 2017, the ICTY is the longest-running war crimes tribunal in history. Its record thus offers an incomparably rich case study of how a Nuremberg-inspired tribunal influences societies emerging from ruinous violence. Book jacket.