International criminal justice: From Nuremberg to the International Criminal Court

This chapter assesses whether international politics can be conducted in the courtroom. It begins with an analysis of the post-Second World War Nuremberg tribunal. While flawed in many ways, these proceedings marked a significant change in thinking about international crimes and individual responsibility. Though the onset of the Cold War prevented the translation of the Nuremberg legacy into more permanent, treaty-based international institutions, the ideas Nuremberg incubated were to have a lasting impact on international law. As in so many other areas of international law and international politics, the end of the Cold War was a watershed. The 1990s saw the revival of ad hoc international criminal tribunals, most notably the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The chapter then examines the International Criminal Court, which is, in many ways, the culmination of efforts to institutionalize international criminal justice.