The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials

Edited by Kevin Jon 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 Jon 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 Jon Heller and Gerry Simpson

1. Introduction, Kevin Jon Heller & Gerry Simpson
Part 1: Pre-Histories: From Von Hagenbach to The Armenian Genocide
2. From Might to Right: The affair of Kham Muon and the Franco-Siamese Mixed Court in historical perspective, Benjamin Brockman-Hawe
3. Peter von Hagenbach and the Twilight Zone pre-history of international criminal law, Gregory S. Gordon
4. The special military tribunal for the Armenian Genocide, Jennifer Balint
Part 2: European Histories I: Prosecuting Atrocity
5. US military trials against Spanish Kapos in Mauthausen and universal jurisdiction, Rosa Ana Alija-Fernandez
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, Frederic Megret
8. Responding to crimes against humanity committed in Slovenia after the Second World War, Jernej Letnar Cernic
Part 3: European Histories II: Americans in Europe
9. Capitalism's victor's justice? Prosecution of industrialists post WWII, Grietje Baars
10. Eisentrager's (Forgotten) Merits: Military commissions and collateral review, Stephen Vladeck
Part 4: European Histories III: Contemporary Trials
11. Making peace with the past: Federal Republic of Germany's accountability for World War II massacres before the Italian Supreme Court, Benedetta Faedi Duramy
12. Hungarian historical justice trials, Tamas Hoffman
13. Nuremberg revised? Prosecuting Soviet war crimes in the Baltic States, Rain Liivoja
14. The law of universal jurisdiction: The case of Norway, Julia Selman-Ayetey
Part 5: African Histories
15. Reading the shadows of history: The bridges between Turkish and Ethiopian 'internationalised' domestic crime trials, Jackson Maogoto
16. Mass trials and modes of responsibility for international crimes: Ethiopia, Firew Kebede Tiba
17. Cold War genocides: Failures of global justice in Nigeria and Pakistan, Hannibal Travis
Part 6: Southern Histories
18. War crimes trials and Australian military justice in the aftermath of World War II, Georgina Fitzpatrick
19. Asian victims and the Australian war crimes trials of the Japanese 1945-51, Narrelle Morris
20. Argentina's Dirty War, Peter Rush
Part 7: Histories of a Type: Excavating the Crime of Aggression
21. From the trial of Takashi Sakai in August 1946 to the Kampala Review Conference in 2010, Roger Clark
22. Aggression prosecutions outside the limelight - the Greiser and Sakai trials, Mark Drumbl
23. The Finnish war-responsibility trial in 1945-56: Flawed justice, anxious peace?, Immi Tallgren
Part 8: Conclusion
24. History of histories, Gerry Simpson

Part of the OAPEN-UK project

The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials

Edited by Kevin Jon Heller and Gerry Simpson

Author Information

Kevin Jon Heller is a Senior Lecturer 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).