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)
