The Argument for the Prosecution

David Scheffer Reviews Katheryn Sikkink's The Justice Cascade for The New Republic

The Justice Cascade
by Kathryn Sikkink
W. W. Norton & Company, 342 pp., $27.95

INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE, often translated as the prosecution of war criminals before international criminal tribunals, is an easy target for its many skeptics. They demand proof of a negative proposition, namely that the tribunals and their cases actually deter further atrocities such as genocide. Indeed, they believe that prosecutions, or the threat of them, provide incentives for human rights violators to increase their oppression and avoid peace deals. And at the other end of the spectrum, critics representing an activist civil society pursue idealistic visions of justice and sometimes consider the tribunals so seriously flawed as to merit abandonment...

Full review can be found at The New Republic