‘International Justice’ Proves Impossible

To the editors:

Katherine M. Dimengo ’04 worries that the legal defenses offered by Bagosora and Milosevic, by challenging the legitimacy of their UN tribunals, are putting the “delicate framework” of the international legal system in jeopardy (Op-Ed, “International Law Under Attack,” April 26). However, she is wrong. The international legal system is quite robust, having survived dozens of full-fledged wars between nations. What is in danger, however, is the pipe dream of an international justice system that will hold all people to some (Western-created) desired standard of conduct.

Ad-hoc tribunals exist and function for very different reasons than those underpinning the ICC. They are instruments of powerful nations for imposing a solution to a limited and particular problem. The Nuremburg trials and the Rwandan and Yugoslav war crimes tribunals are all attempts by strong nations to impose some sort of settlement on an unresolved, horrific injustice that moved the strong nations to outrage. It is the force and motivation sparked by this outrage that enables them to function in the absence of laws, procedures, and institutions for enforcing “international justice.” The ICC, on the other hand, attempts to establish a court, still in the absence of laws, procedures and institutions, but without a defined motivating injustice and outrage. In the absence of such a clear purpose and limited scope, it will become a political playground for grudges.

These tribunals do not have any legitimate authority to judge these defendants. The only possible response to that from the backers of the tribunals is, “So what?” In Nuremburg, in Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, the “international community,” meaning the strong nations, decided that the crimes were so heinous that they didn’t care that they had no statutory authority under an existing legal framework to prosecute these cases. Rather, they invented a court and prosecutors, created rules for it to follow, and gave it powers (based on their military strength, whether it be as military conquerors in post-war Germany or as the collective will of NATO or the Security Council).

So let the defendants rail against the injustice of their lot and then proceed with the trial. These tribunals, after all, are not about “equal justice under the law”—for there is no law. The tribunals are a politically motivated means to punish those who have committed terrible crimes for which they are not otherwise accountable.

It is terribly ironic that Dimengo, in calling for some impossible ideal of “international justice,” desires that Bagosora and Milosevic “not be given free reign [sic] in their trials” to offer their preferred legal defense. If she doesn’t feel that justice and impartiality have a place in these courts, then what would be the point of creating a permanent one?

Jai L. Nair ’99-’00

Medford, Mass.

Apr. 23, 2002