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39 Yale J. Int'l L. Online 94 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/yejloillwo39 and id is 1 raw text is: The Yale Journal of International Law Online International Criminal Justice and the Protection of Human Rights: The Rule of Law or the Hubris of Law? James J. SilkT It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age offoolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair .... Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we might say of our times, it was the age of human rights, it was the age of genocide and torture, it was the era of abundance, it was the era of hunger, it was the dawn of global justice, it was the enduring night of deprivation and abuse. Despite the relentless reports of atrocities and human suffering, human rights activists and critics alike have recently identified human rights as the idea of our time, the only political-moral idea that has received universal acceptance,i the dominant moral narrative for thinking about world affairs,2 and the major article of faith of a secular culture that fears it t Clinical Professor of Law, Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, and Executive Director, Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights, Yale Law School. I would like to thank Paul Kahn for his support and editorial suggestions and Shaheena Ahmad, Elizabeth Brundige, Molly Beutz, Eric Friedman, Kevin Keenan, Matthew Kutcher, Christine Lehmann, David Marcus, Jamie O'Connell, and Rob Sloane for research assistance, comments on drafts, and enlightening discussions of the issues that this essay addresses. I am especially grateful to Sally Pei for her careful reading of the paper and the thoughtful research she did to help me bring it up to date. I presented an earlier version of this paper at the Seminario en Latinoamdrica de Teorfa Constitucional y Polftica (SELA) in Iquique, Chile, in June 2001; the Schell Center's Human Rights Workshop: Current Issues and Events in September 2001; and the American Society of Law 96th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., in March 2002. I am grateful to the participants for their challenging questions. 1. LouIs HENKIN, THE AGE OF RIGHTS xvii (1990). Professor Henkin also writes, The international human rights movement has established the idea of human rights, and that idea is not likely to be superseded. Id. at 29. 2. David Rieff, The Precarious Triumph of Human Rights, N.Y. TIMES MAG., Aug. 8, 1999,

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