After a controversial war in which he was ousted and captured by United
States forces, Saddam Hussein was arraigned before a war crimes
tribunal. Slobodan Milosevic died midway through his contentious trial
by an international war crimes tribunal at The Hague. Calls for
intervention and war crimes trials for the massacres and rapes in
Sudan's Darfur region have been loud and clear, and the United States
remains fiercely opposed to the permanent International Criminal Court.
Are war crimes trials impartial, apolitical forums? Has international
justice for war crimes become an entrenched aspect of globalization? In
Global Justice, Moghalu examines the phenomenon of war crimes trials
from an unusual, political perspective-that of an "anarchical"
international society. He argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom,
war crimes trials are neither motivated nor influenced solely by
abstract notions of justice. Instead, war crimes trials are the product
of the interplay of political forces that have led to an inevitable
clash between globalization and sovereignty on the sensitive question of
who should judge war criminals. From Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm to the
Japanese Emperor Hirohito, from the trials of Milosevic, Saddam Hussein,
and Charles Taylor to Belgium's attempts to enforce the contested
doctrine of "universal jurisdiction," Moghalu renders a compelling tour
de force of one of the most controversial subjects in world politics. He
argues that, necessary though it was, international justice has run into
a crisis of legitimacy. While international trials will remain a policy
option, local or regional responses to mass atrocities will prove more
durable.
