Book Review: Bringing International Fugitives to Justice: Extradition and its Alternatives

• Author: Yvon Dandurand
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567719842211
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Sadoff, D. A. (2018).

Bringing International Fugitives to Justice: Extradition andits Alternatives. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

668 pp. $49.99, I SBN 978-1-107-567 62-7.

Reviewed by: Yvon Dandurand, School of Crimino logy and Crimina l Justice, Universi ty of the Fraser Val ley,

Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada.

DOI: 10.1177/1057567719842211

This comprehensive treatise on extradition and its alternatives, initially published in 2016, has now

been released in a paperback edition. This affords us the opportunity to draw readers’ attention to

this extraordinary book and the exacting scholarship it is based on. The book is written from a global

perspective, with a special emphasis on the United States, and draws from the painstaking research,

vast expertise, and practical experience of its author.

The author, David Sadoff, is the executive director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law.

He previously served as general counsel of the Rome-based International Development Law

Organization, Nepal country director for the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative,

deputy legal adviser and director for Intelligence Reform with the U.S. National Security Council,

assistant general counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), litigation associate with Cro-

well & Moring LLP in Washington (DC), and foreign affairs officer at the U.S. Department of State.

The book is concerned with various intricate issues relating to capturing and delivering interna-

tional fugitives from justice. It purports to offer a novel and robust framework for the operational and

legal analysis of the process of recovering fugitives from abroad for the purpose of prosecution and

punishment. With the exception of immigration law, the focus of the discussion is on criminal law.

One of the book’s main goals is to assist government officials who handle international law enforce-

ment make informed, sound, and lawful decisions when contemplating extradition or one of its

alternatives to bring international fugitives to justice. The depth of the analysis presented will also

make sure that the book will also be useful to judges, legislators, policy analysts, and diplomats, as

well as to legal scholars.

The author reaffirms that an effective international extradition regime is indispensable, particu-

larly in a globalized world where crime is often transnational. However, his assessment of the

existing system seems to vacillate between recognizing that the system functions reasonably well

and suggesting that the system is utterly complex and insufficient. A major contribution of the book

is the opposition it presents between formal extradition processes, governed by treaties and con-

ventions, and their much more informal and controversial alternatives. The author’s view, as a

pragmatist, is that these two approaches serve complementary functions and that neither of them

is sufficient.

Two of the book’s main contributions are its attempt to offer a clea rer terminology for the

analysis of extradition and its alternatives, to which a whole chapter (and a glossary) is devoted,

and a detailed and very intricate discussion of the concept of subject matter jurisdiction. Together,

they offer a very clear useful analytical framework (Part I). The bulk of the book (Part II), as would

International CriminalJustice Review

2019, Vol. 29(3) 304-310

ª2019 Georgia State University

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

journals.sagepub.com/home/icj