About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

13 Melb. J. Int'l L. 349 (2012)
The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law; Beyond Victor's Justice? The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Revisited

handle is hein.journals/meljil13 and id is 350 raw text is: THE NUREMBERG MILITARY TRIBUNALS AND THE ORIGINS OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW BY KEVIN JON HELLER (OXFORD, UK: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2011) 509 PAGES. PRICE US$135.00 (HARDBACK) ISBN 9780199554317. BEYOND VICTOR'S JUSTICE? THE TOKYO WAR CRIMES TRIAL REVISITED EDITED BY YUKI TANAKA, TIM MCCORMACK AND GERRY SIMPSON (LEIDEN, NETHERLANDS: MARTINUS NIJHOFF, 2011) 402 PAGES. PRICE US$192.00 (HARDBACK) ISBN 9789004203037. 'We want historians to confirm our belief that the present rests upon profound intentions and immutable necessities. But the true historical sense confirms our existence among countless lost events, without a landmark or a point of reference.' Michel Foucault, 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, Historyl At a time when the field of international criminal law is moving beyond its adolescence into a greater sense of existential comfort, focusing on closure mechanisms for the ad hoc tribunals and on the 10 year anniversary of the International Criminal Court, two recent publications revisit what they take to be neglected institutional sites at the origins of the field. Kevin Jon Heller's The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law makes this bold claim within his title: a claim that anchors the text as a kind of origin narrative rather than merely a descriptive history of this corner of what might be called 'tribunal studies'. Yuki Tanaka, Tim McCormack and Gerry Simpson's edited volume entitled Beyond Victor's Justice? The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Revisited is more restrained, 'revisiting' the International Military Tribunal for the Far East ('Tokyo Trial') to consider alternatives to the familiar victor's justice critique without assigning the tribunal such constitutive power over the field. Taken together, these books attempt to re-inscribe neglected institutional pasts into the present of international criminal law, offering alternate lineages and ways of understanding the field's development and animating moments. Before considering the contributions of these two books in more detail, it is worth pausing to note different historiographical approaches in international criminal law scholarship. How is the history of this field written? The more or less standard textbook account tends to offer a progress narrative that began with the post-World War II tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo, was interrupted for several decades by the Cold War, resumed during the 1990s with the ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, adapted with the rise of 'hybrid' and 'internationalised' tribunals, and which culminated with the establishment of the permanent International Criminal Court. Social theorist Michel Foucault would have taken issue with such a telling by reminding us of Michel Foucault, 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History' in Paul Rabinow (ed), The Foucault Reader (Pantheon, 1984) 76, 89. 349

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most