The Global Legal Studies Center & Humanitarianism and World Order Research Circle invite you to a conference on:

Responses to Atrocity: International and Domestic Judicial Mechanisms

Friday, April 20, 2007
9:00 am - Noon (Room 3250 Law) &
1:30 - 5:00 pm (Room 7200 Law)

Organizers: Heinz Klug, Professor, UW Law School
& Scott Straus, Assistant Professor, Political Science, UW-Madison

Conference Description:
In the past ten to fifteen years, there has been a surge of legal activity aimed at redressing past human rights atrocities. The purposes of these trials vary from accountability, to documenting a historical record, to reconciliation, and reparation. From Darfur to Sierra Leone to the former Yugoslavia and well beyond, the question of trials—whether international or domestic—is not one that policy makers can ignore. Despite the instinctive appeal of legal processes to address major human rights violations, the increasing use of courts raises a number of complex and difficult questions.

This conference puts the spotlight on questions that have received relatively little attention in the existing literature: what are the tensions and tradeoffs between international and domestic judicial responses to past atrocities? Are international and domestic judicial mechanisms competitive or complementary? What does an international trial accomplish that a domestic trial cannot and vice versa? What are the limits of domestic and international trials? In what ways do international trials influence domestic ones and vice versa? Is “local justice” better suited than international trial standards or does “local” justice also have problems?

The conference will bring together scholars and writers who work on a wide range of issues and regions. Some will examine the global scene, examining the multiple ways that international, foreign, and domestic trials interact. Some look at the interplay of international legal processes and the behavior of states, from the former Yugoslavia to Northern Uganda. Others will examine specific cases where courts succeeded and failed in redressing past human rights abuses, from post-war Germany, to South Africa, Rwanda, and beyond.

Sponsors:
Global Legal Studies Center (a joint initiative of the UW Law School and the Division of International Studies) the Humanitarianism and World Order Research Circle, Division of International Studies, the International Institute, the African Studies Program, and Global Studies (Research circles are supported by the Division of International Studies, the International Institute, and Global Studies).

Agenda

Friday, April 20, 2007

(Room 3250 Law)
9:00-9:10 am Introduction
Scott Straus, University of Wisconsin, Madison

9:10-10:30 am Panel 1, Leigh Payne, Chair

“How International Tribunals Influence Each Other and How They Interact with Domestic Efforts: An Overview”
Thierry Cruvellier, International Justice Tribune

“The Complementarity in Global and Domestic Trends in Transitional Justice”
Kathryn Sikkink, University of Minnesota

10:45-Noon Panel 2, Crawford Young, Chair

“Balance of Power and Justice in the Balance: International War Crimes Tribunals and the Politics of State Cooperation”
Victor Peskin, Arizona State University

“The Delicate Dance: Law and Politics of Justice in Central Africa”
Peter Rosenblum, Columbia University

Noon – 1.30 pm Lunch Break

(Room 7200 Law)
1:30-2:45 pm Panel 3: Francine Hirsh, Chair

“The Hope(lessness) of Courts in Historical Reconstruction”
Judge Dennis Davis, New York University and South Africa’s High Court

“Double Standards: Nazis and Terrorists on Trial in 1975 West Germany”
Rebecca Wittmann, University of Toronto

3:00-4:15 pm Panel 4: Sharon Hutchinson, Chair

“The Uses and Abuses of Local Justice”
Lars Waldorf, University of London

“The LRA and the ICC: Peace, Reconciliation, and Justice in Northern Uganda”
Ronald Atkinson, University of South Carolina

4:30-5:00 pm Wrap-Up

Heinz Klug, Leigh Payne, and Scott Straus, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstracts

How International Tribunals Influence Each Other and How They Interact with Domestic Efforts: An Overview (Thierry Cruvellier)

The interaction between war crimes prosecutions can occur at all levels: between two domestic efforts, between two international undertakings, and between an international tribunal and a national judicial system. Focusing primarily on international/international and international/domestic interactions, and based on concrete experiences from Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Bosnia, Congo or Colombia, the paper will present a brief overview of how diverse and contingent the relationship between war crimes prosecutions efforts can be.

The Complementarily in Global and Domestic Trends in Transitional Justice (Kathryn Sikkink)

The doctrine of complementarity built into the statute of the ICC can be seen as a metaphor for a much broader form of interaction of the international and domestic legal and political spheres in the area of transitional justice. I will first document trends in international, foreign, and domestic human rights trials, using data from a new data set that I have created together with Carrie Booth Walling. The data suggests that these different trials are all part of a related global phenomenon that I will refer to here as a new model of global regulation of core political rights. For the most part, the new model uses a decentralized system of enforcement that depends primarily on enforcement through domestic courts. International and foreign courts, however, are the backup institutions necessary to create a fully functioning international model.

Balance of Power and Justice in the Balance: International War Crimes Tribunals and the Politics of State Cooperation (Victor Peskin)

This presentation examines the shifting balance of power between the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and states implicated in mass atrocity. The presentation will demonstrate that the tribunals’ lack of police powers has 1) empowered states to defy their legal obligation to hand over war crimes suspects, witnesses, and evidence to the tribunal; 2) compelled the tribunals to engage in a political process of confrontation and negotiation to persuade defiant states to cooperate.

The Uses and Abuses of Local Justice (Lars Waldorf)

When it comes to confronting mass violence, the preferred transitional justice mechanisms – international tribunals and national truth commissions – share two serious limitations: (1) they cannot reach the majority of low-level perpetrators; and (2) they do not provide meaningful restitution for most victims. These limitations point up the need for more attention to using local justice mechanisms in post-conflict states. However, with the International Criminal Court (ICC) starting its first prosecutions in northern Uganda and eastern Congo, there is a real danger that international criminal justice will displace and discourage local justice initiatives.

The LRA and the ICC: Peace, Reconciliation, and Justice in Northern Uganda (Ronald Atkinson)

This paper will focus on a case study of responses to atrocity currently in process. Peace talks to end the more than twenty-year war in northern Uganda are set to resume this month in Juba, Southern Sudan. These talks represent the best chance to end the war in more than a decade, and perhaps since it began. This paper examines the complex dynamics driving this process and its likely success (including the strong commitment of the Lord’s Resistance Army/Movement to ending the conflict), the problematic role of the International Criminal Court, and the potential of local approaches to reconciliation and justice to serve as alternatives to the ICC.

The Hope(lessness) of Courts in Historical Reconstruction (Judge Dennis Davis)

The presentation will discuss the transformation of domestic courts within the context of redressing a brutal history in the case of South Africa. The country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission had profound limitations ,some of which were revealed in subsequent cases like that of Wouter Basson, head of the Apartheid chemical programme. The courts then became the arena of redress and failed. This raises questions as to why and whether another outcome was possible.

Double Standards: Nazis and Terrorists on Trial in 1975 West Germany (Rebecca Wittmann)

This paper will examine two enormous criminal trials that began in 1975 in West Germany: the Majdanek Trial of Nazi camp guards, and the Stammheim Trial of the Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorists. First, between 1975 and 1981 in Düsseldorf, 16 camp guards from the concentration and death camp Majdanek in Lublin, Poland were tried for murder, and only one was found guilty of perpetrating murder; 7 were convicted of aiding and abetting murder, 5 were acquitted, and the rest either died during the trial or were removed from the case. Despite the much larger body of information, evidence, and understanding regarding the Nazi crime complex available in the 1970s than ever before, this result indicates a relaxing of sentencing standards,. In the end really only the most sadistic – and exceptional – of Nazi criminals, usually camp guards, were tried and convicted of murder. Changes to the law made it easier for those who had the most power in the Nazi regime – the desktop murderers – to go free or escape trial.

In contrast, I will explore the infamous Stammheim trial, which began in the same year. The trial of the four founding members of the left-wing terrorist organization the RAF (Red Army Faction) was, unlike the Majdanek trial, a heavily publicized, sensational media event in which the Federal State Attorney’s office attempted to prosecute “enemies of the state” who had traumatized the nation in the early 1970s with department store bombings, kidnapping, and the murder. It is my contention that the conservatism of the judiciary, the general public belief that Nazi crimes had been adequately dealt with, and the growing sense of insecurity in Germany shaped the outcome of these two distinct trials.