13171a

SoSe 17: War, Crimes and Law. A Global History of International Law and War Crimes Trials

Franziska Exeler

Comments

This course examines the history of international criminal law and war crimes trials. Beginning with the mid-nineteenth century, we will analyze the first attempts to establish international rules that sought to regulate the conduct of warfare and limit its effect for humanitarian reasons. The aftermath of the First World War led to the establishment of the League of Nations, an institution whose aim it was to curb aggressive war. But it was in response to the extreme violence of the Second World War that international law underwent a revolution: the August 1945 London Charter, signed by the four main Allies, defined certain acts as crimes, divided these into three categories (crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity) and determined that individuals who had committed one or more of these acts could now be held criminally responsible under international and not just under domestic law. In the course, we will examine the 1945-46 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and the 1946-48 International Military Tribunal for the Far East at Toyko, but we will also discuss the politics of justice and retribution more generally, which included tens of thousands of hybrid (that is, a mix of international and domestic) war crimes trials that took place in post-World War II Europe and Asia. The last part of the course investigates two more recent international war crimes tribunals: the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and discusses the establishment of the International Criminal Court. It concludes with an examination of theories of transitional justice, and examples of how countries (and not individuals) have been held accountable for war crimes outside criminal courts. close

14 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Wed, 14:00 - 16:00 14 Class schedule

Wed, 2017-04-19 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Dr. Franziska Exeler