The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials

Edited by Kevin Heller and Gerry Simpson

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence
Provides a detailed analysis of a selection of under-explored domestic and international war crimes trials
Offers a global perspective, with analysis of war crimes trials that have taken place across European, African, and Australiasian countries, including the Franco-Siamese Mixed Court and the special military tribunal for the Armenian Genocide
Puts these trials in their historical context, exploring their significance to the countries they took place in

Part of the OAPEN-UK project

The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials

Edited by Kevin Heller and Gerry Simpson

Description

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Several instances of war crimes trials are familiar to all scholars, but in order to advance understanding of the development of international criminal law, it is important to provide a full range of evidence from less-familiar trials. This book therefore provides an essential resource for a more comprehensive overview, uncovering and exploring some of the lesser-known war crimes trials that have taken place in a variety of contexts: international and domestic, northern and southern, historic and contemporary. It analyses these trials with a view to recognising institutional innovations, clarifying doctrinal debates, and identifying their general relevance to contemporary international criminal law. At the same time, the book recognises international criminal law's history of suppression or sublimation: What stories has the discipline refused to tell? What stories have been displaced by the ones it has told? Has international criminal law's framing or telling of these stories excluded other possibilities? And - perhaps most important of all - how can recovering the lost stories and imagining new narrative forms reconfigure the discipline?

Many of the trials examined in this book have hardly ever before been discussed; others have been examined only in the most cursory manner. Indeed, until now, no volume has been dedicated to telling the story of these trials, that have yet to find a place in the international criminal law canon. Providing a detailed analysis of these trials, which took place in Europe, Africa, South America, and Australasia, in both historical and contemporary contexts, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the development of international criminal law.

Part of the OAPEN-UK project

The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials

Edited by Kevin Heller and Gerry Simpson

1: Introduction, Kevin Jon Heller & Gerry Simpson
Part 1: Pre-Histories: From Von Hagenbach to The Armenian Genocide
2: The trial of Peter von Hagenbach: Reconciling history, historiography, and international criminal law, Gregory S. Gordon
3: A supranational criminal tribunal for the colonial era: the Franco-Siamese Mixed Court, Benjamin Brockman-Hawe
4: The Ottoman state special military tribunal for the Genocide of the Armenians: 'Doing government business', Jennifer Balint
Part 2: European Histories I: Prosecuting Atrocity
5: Justice for no-land's men? United States military trials against Spanish Kapos in Mauthausen and universal jurisdiction, Rosa Ana Alija-Fernández
6: A narrative of justice and the (re)writing of history: French trials after World War II, Dov Jacobs
7: The Bordeaux Trial: Prosecuting the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, Frédéric Mégret
Part 3: European Histories II: Americans in Europe
8: Capitalism's victor's justice? Prosecution of industrialists post WWII, Grietje Baars
9: Eisentrager's (Forgotten) Merits: Military commissions and collateral review, Stephen Vladeck
Part 4: European Histories III: Contemporary Trials
10: Making peace with the past: Federal Republic of Germany's accountability for World War II massacres before the Italian Supreme Court, Benedetta Faedi Duramy
11: Trying communism through international criminal law? The experiences of the Hungarian historical justice trials, Tamás Hoffman
12: Competing Histories: Soviet war crimes in the Baltic States, Rain Liivoja
13: Universal jurisdiction: Conflict and contoversy in Norway, Julia Selman-Ayetey
Part 5: African Histories
14: Reading the shadows of history: The bridges between Turkish and Ethiopian 'internationalised' domestic crime trials, Jackson Maogoto
15: Mass trials and modes of responsibility for international crimes: Ethiopia, Firew Kebede Tiba
Part 6: Southern Histories
16: War crimes trials, victor's justice, and Australian military justice in the aftermath of the second world war, Georgina Fitzpatrick
17: Justice for 'Asian' victims: Australian war crimes trials of the Japanese 1945-51, Narrelle Morris
18: Dirty war crimes: Jurisdictions of memory and international criminal law, Peter Rush
Part 7: Histories of a Type: Excavating the Crime of Aggression
21: The crime of aggression: From the trial of Takashi Sakai in August 1946 to the Kampala Review Conference in 2010, Roger Clark
22: 'Germans are the lords and Poles are the servants': The trial of Arthur Greiser in Poland, 1946, Mark Drumbl
23: The Finnish war-responsibility trial in 1945-56: Flawed justice, anxious peace?, Immi Tallgren

Part of the OAPEN-UK project

The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials

Edited by Kevin Heller and Gerry Simpson

Author Information

Edited by Kevin Heller, Associate Professor and Reader, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, and Gerry Simpson, Kenneth Bailey Chair of International Law, University of Melbourne

Kevin Jon Heller is a Associate Professor and Reader at Melbourne Law School, where he teaches criminal law and international criminal law. He has a JD from Stanford Law School, an MA in literature from Duke University, an MA and BA in social and political theory from the New School for Social Research, all with honors and a PhD from Leiden University. His work has appeared in the European Journal of International Law, the American Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Criminal Justice, the Michigan Law Review, the Leiden Journal of International Law, and many others. On the practical side, Kevin has been involved in the International Criminal Court's negotiations over the crime of aggression, served as Human Rights Watch's external legal advisor on the trial of Saddam Hussein, and has consulted with the defense in a number of cases at the ICTY and ICTR.

Gerry Simpson holds the Kenneth Bailey Chair of International Law at the University of Melbourne. He also is currently an Open Society Fellow (based in Tbilisi). Gerry was a Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics (until 2008) and has been a Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University (1996- 1998) and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School (1999).

Contributors:

Rosa Ana Alija-Fernández, Universitat de Barcelona
Grietje Baars, City University, London
Jennifer Balint, University of Melbourne
Benjamin Brockman-Hawe, Special Tribunal for Lebanon
Roger Clark, Rutgers School of Law
Mark Drumbl, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Benedetta Faedi Duramy, Golden Gate University School of Law
Georgina Fitzpatrick, University of Melbourne
Gregory S. Gordon, University of North Dakota
Tamás Hoffman
Dov Jacobs, Leiden University
Rain Liivoja, University of Melbourne
Jackson Maogoto, University of Manchester
Frédéric Mégret, Macgill University
Narrelle Morris, University of Melbourne
Peter Rush, University of Melbourne
Julia Selman-Ayetey, Anglia University
Immi Tallgren, Helsinki University
Firew Kebede Tiba, University of Hong Kong
Stephen Vladeck, American University Washington College of Law

Part of the OAPEN-UK project

The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials

Edited by Kevin Heller and Gerry Simpson

Reviews and Awards

"Heller and Simpson's work is an outstanding accomplishment since it throws light on many themes that were previously rarely explored." - Milan Kuhli, European Journal of International Law

Part of the OAPEN-UK project