Ronen Steinke
The Politics of International Criminal Justice
German Perspectives from Nuremberg to The Hague
Oxford, Hart Publishing (Studies in International Law n°41), mai 2012, 160 p., ISBN:9781849463133, £30
To anyone setting out to explore the entanglement of international criminal justice with the interests of States, Germany is a particularly curious, exemplary case. Although a liberal democracy since 1949, its political position has altered radically in the last 60 years. Starting from a position of harsh scepticism in the years following the Nuremberg Trials, and opening up to the rationales of international criminal justice only slowly - and then mainly in the context of domestic trials against functionaries of the former East German regime after 1990 - Germany is today one of the most active supporters of the International Criminal Court. The climax of this is its campaigning to make the ICC independent of the UN Security Council - a debate in which Germany took a position in stark contrast to the United States. This book offers new insight into the debates leading up to such policy shifts. Drawing on government documents and interviews with policymakers, it enriches a broader debate on the politics of international criminal justice which has to date often been focused primarily on the United States.
Auteur
Ronen Steinke is a lawyer and a political journalist with Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Sommaire
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
1 The Politics of ‘Historical Truth’: An Outline
- ‘Historical Truth’ as a Goal and a Problem
- Extreme Selectivity and Slices of Truth
- The Need for Representative Case Selections
- Are Objective Selections Possible? The Gravity Test
- The Critical Systemic Role of the Prosecutor
- Checks on the Prosecutor? The ‘Accountability v Independence’
- Debate
- Conclusion
- The Allies in Control
- Allied Priorities: Shaping the Historical Narrative
- Germany and the nullum crimen Debate
- Germany and the tu quoque Debate
- Germany’s Opposition to New Tribunals
- Conclusion
- West Germany in Control
- West German Narrative Interests
- The U-Turn on nullum crimen
- Conclusion
- The UN Security Council in Control
- Germany’s Narrative Interests on the Balkans
- Western Priorities: Shaping the Historical Narrative
- Germany’s Interests in New Tribunals
- Conclusion
- Who Should Be in Control?
- Originally, Germany Favoured UN Security Council Control
- Then, Germany Argues for ‘Independence’ Instead
- Remarkably, Idealist and Realists in Germany had Joined Hands
- German Realists had Nothing to Lose from the Shift Towards Independence
- More Importantly However, They had a Lot to Gain
- Independence and the Crime of Aggression
- Conclusion
6 Cosmopolitan Ideals and National Interest: Concluding Remarks
- Bibliography
- Index
