Justice in the Balkans: Prosecuting War Crimes in the Hague Tribunal / Edition 1

by John Hagan

Overview

Called a fig leaf for inaction by many at its inception, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has surprised its critics by growing from an unfunded U.N. Security Council resolution to an institution with more than 1,000 employees and a $100 million annual budget. With Slobodan Milosevic now on trial and more than forty fellow indictees currently detained, the success of the Hague tribunal has forced many to reconsider the prospects of international justice. John Hagan's Justice in the Balkans is a powerful firsthand look at the inner workings of the tribunal as it has moved from an experimental organization initially viewed as irrelevant to the first truly effective international court since Nuremberg.

Creating an institution that transcends national borders is a challenge fraught with political and organizational difficulties, yet, as Hagan describes here, the Hague tribunal has increasingly met these difficulties head-on and overcome them. The chief reason for its success, he argues, is the people who have shaped it, particularly its charismatic chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour. With drama and immediacy, Justice in the Balkans re-creates how Arbour worked with others to turn the tribunal's fortunes around, reversing its initial failure to arrest and convict significant figures and advancing the tribunal's agenda to the point at which Arbour and her colleagues, including her successor, Carla Del Ponte (nicknamed the Bulldog), were able to indict Milosevic himself. Leading readers through the investigations and criminal proceedings of the tribunal, Hagan offers the most original account of the foundation and maturity of the institution.

Justice in the Balkans brilliantly shows how an international social movement for human rights in the Balkans was transformed into a pathbreaking legal institution and a new transnational legal field. The Hague tribunal becomes, in Hagan's work, a stellar example of how individuals working with collective purpose can make a profound difference.

"The Hague tribunal reaches into only one house of horrors among many; but, within the wisely precise remit given to it, it has beamed the light of justice into the darkness of man's inhumanity, to woman as well as to man."—The Times (London)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226312286
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/17/2003
Series:	Chicago Series in Law and Society
Edition description:	1
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John Hagan is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law at Northwestern University, University Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Toronto, and Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. A Guggenheim fellow, he is past president of the American Society of Criminology and the author or coauthor of ten books, most recently Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, which received the Albert J. Reiss Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Sociological Association.

Table of Contents

List of Key Characters
List of Abbreviations
Prologue - Contempt of Court
Introduction - The Prosecution's Theory
1. From Nuremberg
2. Experts on Atrocity
3. The Virtual Tribunal
4. The Real-Time Tribunal
5. The Srebrenica Ghost Team
6. The Foca Rape Case
7. Courting Contempt
Appendix
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

With our attention shifted from ethnic cleansing to global terrorism, we have lost track of what is at stake in The Hague, where the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has been at work since 1994. With this penetrating analysis of the court's workings, Hagan forcefully yanks us back. The arrest and trial of Slobodan Milosevic have been the sensational culmination of the process, but other crucial trials preceded it, including those of the perpetrators of Srebrenica and Foca. Hagan traces the complex interactions between investigatory and prosecutorial teams, the dynamics between witnesses and prosecution, and how the special leadership of three successive chief judges turned an unpromising start into a forceful finish. On the path from the Nuremberg trials to the ‘liberal legalism’ of the International Criminal Court, these proceedings, Hagan argues, stand as a milestone in the creation of humanitarian and international criminal law.”

Foreign Affairs - Robert Legvold

An excellent narrative history of the Yugoslav Tribunal based upon extensive interviews with the principals, Justice in the Balkans also promotes the concepts of legal liberalism.”

Literary Review of Canada - John English

This is a superb book, comprehensively researched and elegantly written. . . . . [Hagan] tells the story of how the diverse members of the human rights community . . . painstakingly breathed life into nascent international judicial institutions.

Slavic Review - Richard H. Ullman

Hagan paints a nuanced picture of the way in which a particular set of individuals . . . was able to navigate the difficult waters of international politics and steer the Tribunal toward greater success. . . . Only with these kinds of studies can policymakers ensure that the ICC—along with the broader enterprise of international human rights enforcement . . . . has the best chance of success.”

American Journal of International Law - Jenny S. Martinez

“Hagan paints a nuanced picture of the way in which a particular set of individuals . . . was able to navigate the difficult waters of international politics and steer the Tribunal toward greater success. . . . Only with these kinds of studies can policymakers ensure that the ICC—along with the broader enterprise of international human rights enforcement . . . . has the best chance of success.”

— Jenny S. Martinez

American Journal of International Law

“An excellent narrative history of the Yugoslav Tribunal based upon extensive interviews with the principals, Justice in the Balkans also promotes the concepts of legal liberalism.”

— John English

Literary Review of Canada

“This is a superb book, comprehensively researched and elegantly written. . . . . [Hagan] tells the story of how the diverse members of the human rights community . . . painstakingly breathed life into nascent international judicial institutions.”

— Richard H. Ullman

Slavic Review

“With our attention shifted from ethnic cleansing to global terrorism, we have lost track of what is at stake in The Hague, where the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has been at work since 1994. With this penetrating analysis of the court's workings, Hagan forcefully yanks us back. The arrest and trial of Slobodan Milosevic have been the sensational culmination of the process, but other crucial trials preceded it, including those of the perpetrators of Srebrenica and Foca. Hagan traces the complex interactions between investigatory and prosecutorial teams, the dynamics between witnesses and prosecution, and how the special leadership of three successive chief judges turned an unpromising start into a forceful finish. On the path from the Nuremberg trials to the ‘liberal legalism’ of the International Criminal Court, these proceedings, Hagan argues, stand as a milestone in the creation of humanitarian and international criminal law.”

— Robert Legvold

Foreign Affairs

Hagan (Northwestern Univ.) here contributes to our understanding of the changing character of international law and of the emergence of the Hague tribunal. His innovation is to approach the tribunal from the viewpoint of "norm entrepreneurship," assessing the resourcefulness of the several chief prosecutors in the tribunal's brief history. The book avoids replicating much previous work about prosecuting criminality in the former Yugoslavia and instead focuses on the scope for action and imagination that such prosecutors as Louise Arbor have brought to their job. The narrative effectively uses a certain amount of sociological theory in explaining the importance of the morale and motivation of the tribunal's investigating teams, the "legitimation" of its role among NATO powers, and the prosecutors' skillful use of media resources. For those not familiar with the topic, this book offers an astonishing array of the accidents and contingencies that came to shape the tribunal, while readers with a background in the topic will find value in the detailed accounts of recent investigations. Because of the author's clear style and solid research, this book can be recommended confidently to most academic and larger public libraries.-Zachary T. Irwin, Sch. of Humanities & Social Science, Pennsylvania State Univ., Erie Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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