Designing Criminal Tribunals: Sovereignty and International Concerns in the Protection of Human Rights.
Author | Kaufman, Zachary D. |
Position | Book review |
Designing Criminal Tribunals: Sovereignly and International Concerns in the Protection of Human Rights, by Steven D. Roper and Lilian A. Barria
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. (2006) Price: $100 Reviewed by: Zachary D. Kaufman
Steven D. Roper and Lilian A. Barria, professors in the Department of Political Science at Eastern Illinois University, are frequent collaborators on scholarly work concerning criminal tribunals. Their co-authored articles and joint conference presentations on assorted aspects of this topic have culminated in Designing Criminal Tribunals, a book that examines various ad hoc tribunals, primarily those created since the end of the Cold War. These tribunals include the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR), both international tribunals; the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), and the Special Crimes Panel for East Timor (SCPET), all mixed tribunals; and the Indonesian Human Rights Court (IHRC), a purely domestic court.
Observing that "[i]nternational law, tribunals and law enforcement mechanisms have developed unevenly in the 20th century as a reflection of political realities," (1) Roper and Barria argue "that legal concerns are embedded within a political process (either domestic or international) in which rights and obligations are redefined based on political necessity." (2) This point, vocalized by many others in the literature on international criminal law and transitional justice, reflects a realist view of international relations that highlights the epiphenomenal nature, or secondary role, of international law vis-a-vis world politics. And the authors certainly make their case, by convincingly showing that the general evolution in tribunal construction since the early 1990s--from purely international to mixed to purely domestic--reflects states' changing preferences based on matters quite separate from principles of law and justice, such as financial considerations and assertions of state sovereignty.
While Designing Criminal Tribunals provides important information and analysis about several critical aspects of its six key case studies, including their financial bases and completion strategies (Chapters Five and Six, respectively, which are the two strongest chapters), it suffers from two major weaknesses. The first is that the book adds little original research to this important topic. By drawing heavily upon secondary sources, Roper and Barria deliver little more than a summary of the existing literature on this topic.
The second major weakness of the book is that it is methodologically unsound. The logic is arbitrary, and readers are left pondering the true focus of the project and its rationale. One methodological problem of this book is its narrow transitional justice option selection. Why the authors chose to focus on examining only ad hoc tribunals, given the self-described purpose of their project, remains unclear. Roper and Barria rightly argue, "To hold individuals accountable for their crimes under international law in a meaningful way requires the creation and the implementation of mechanisms designed to provide justice." (3) However, the authors proceed to announce that they will exclusively focus on ad hoc tribunals. Certainly, there are many other ways to address suspected international criminals, but Roper and Barria make no effort to explain why the essentially contested concepts of "accountability" and "justice"--which the authors do not acknowledge as such until the end of the book (4)--are defined so narrowly, or whether alternative mechanisms are somehow less...
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