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Summary
Summary
1 In his separate opinion in the Nuclear Weapons case, Judge Mohammed Bed- oui, then the President of the International Court of Justice, called nuclear we- ons "the absolute evil. " There are a few other things which merit being called - solutely evil. They are the predicates of the International Criminal Court and of various domestic laws patterned on the Rome Statute: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression. A conference organized by the Berlin-based Republikanischer Anwältinnen- und Anwälteverein (Republican Lawyers As- ciation) and the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights was held in Berlin in June 2005 under the title Globalverfassung versus Realpolitik (Global Constitution versus Realpolitik). It dealt with the tension between these univ- sally accepted norms and the actual practice of governments in an age charact- ized by the ill-defined concept of the "war on terror. " This book is the outcome of that conference. It is intended for a wide variety of readers: academics, all kinds of jurists, as well as human rights activists, who sometimes know more about the applicable law than the legal experts. It owes its existence to a paradox: On the one hand, new structures for dealing with the most serious international crimes are being put into place.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
The volume is a collection of essays that investigate current developments in the prosecution of human rights crimes on the national and international levels. Specialists representing a number of countries discuss relevant topics concerning the practice in different nations and analyze problems that have arisen in this developing field of law. They review the first years of the International Criminal Court and examine the role of international law in the national jurisprudence of selected countries such as Germany. In the process, a case is made for the development of a growing practice of universal jurisdiction. There is also an overview of attempts to bring to justice certain prominent persons such as Augusto Pinochet and Donald Rumsfeld, as well as some lesser-known ones. The emerging principle of universal jurisdiction and the war on terror's effect on various legal norms in some nations is discussed. While these developments could have a negative impact on long-standing principles of international law, for the most part the authors are positive about the long-term impact the developing practice of universal jurisdiction will have for dealing with international human rights crimes. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. E. W. Webking emeritus, University of Lethbridge
