Page 58 [58]
VIOLETA BESIREVIÉ
crimes.$ AIl other non-legal aspirations are notably missing. Was that the sign that
lessons were learned and that associating non-legal purposes, like peacebuilding
or reconciliation, with international justice mechanisms impeded international
criminal justice rather than advanced it?
To explore the issue, I will pit the Nurnberg “International” Military Tribunal
(IMT) mandate against the ICTY mandate. I have deliberately decided to compare
the two legacies, not only because I am emotionally attached to the region of
the former Yugoslavia, but also because the ICTY was the first modern tribunal
established after the Nuremberg. An additional reason also urges parallel
assessment of their mandates — the criticisms leveled against the IMT and the
ICTY were to some extent the same, in the sense that they were ad hoc bodies
designed to administer justice selectively.’
ACCOMPLISHED MISSIONS: INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALIZATION
OF ATROCITIES
Much ink has been spilled in regards to the Nuremberg trail. On many occasions,
the Nuremberg legacy has been subjected to methodical evaluation that resulted in
divided opinions on almost every aspect of the trial.’ For some, Nuremberg was a
great success, a milestone in international criminal law. To its critics, Nuremberg
was a failure, a mere victor’s justice in which ex post facto substantive rules were
applied under novel jurisdictional theories.’ There are conflicting views on whether
the trial was procedurally fair." There is much to be said about the Nuremberg
trial, but this chapter’s space and purpose do not allow me to assess all aspects of
the trial deeply. Instead, I will focus on the predominant concern of this chapter
— the IMT mandate and the issue of what Nuremberg was about.
° See the Preamble of the Rome Statute.
7 Claus Kress, The International Criminal Court as a Turning Point in the History of
International Criminal Justice, in Antonio Cassese (ed.), The Oxford Companion to
International Criminal Justice, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009, 143-159.
The scholarship on the Nuremberg trial and the IMT is immense. I would like to draw
attention to the 1995 New York Law School Journal of Human Rights symposium: Panel I:
Telford Taylor Panel: Critical Perspectives on the Nuremberg Trials, New York Law School
Journal of Human Rights 12 (1995), 453-544; Donna E. Arzt, Nuremberg, Denazification
and Democracy: The Hate Speech Problem at the International Military Tribunal, New York
Law School Journal of Human Rights 12 (1995), 689-758.
See discussion of Jonathan Bush in Panel I: Telford Taylor Panel: Critical Perspectives on
the Nuremberg Trials, 461.
10 Arzt, Nuremberg, Denazification and Democracy, 702.
+56 +