TY - CHAP
T1 - ‘One of the Challenges that Can Plausibly Be Raised Against Them’?
T2 - On the Role of Truth in Debates about the Legitimacy of International Criminal Tribunals
AU - Holtermann, Jakob v. H.
PY - 2017/1/1
Y1 - 2017/1/1
N2 - The Chamber, in any case, has one remit - and one remit only - and that is to establish the truth. (Presiding Judge Claude Jorda in the Lubanga confirmation hearing) Gentlemen, please. We are trying to cut out this type of argument. We are running a trial now. We are not a truth commission. That’s the point. (Presiding Judge, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) Introduction The prospects of the imminent closure in 2015 of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) seem to have spawned concern within the tribunal about what kind of legacy it will leave behind. Thus, in an apparent attempt to guide posterity in the right direction, the ICTR has initiated a number of so-called legacy projects, which according to the website The ICTR Remembers are intended to ‘ensure that the valuable lessons learned over the Tribunal’s 20-year history are not lost’. Among the projects, which include a symposium on international criminal law and two documentary films about the ICTR, one project particularly catches the eye. Under the headline ‘The Genocide Story Project’, the ICTR Prosecutor proposes ‘to write an account of the Rwandan Genocide as told through the judgments of the ICTR Trial and the Appeals Chambers’. In his description of the project, the Prosecutor emphasises that ‘this account will not be the story as told by the Prosecutor but, rather, will be the story as told by the ICTR’s judgments. Only those facts that were able to be brought to the courtroom, heard before judges, subjected to cross-examination, analyzed by judges, and finally adjudicated will be included in the narrative’. According to the Prosecutor, this project will provide us with one of ‘the most authoritative accounts of the Genocide compiled to date’. The Prosecutor’s project is interesting because it reminds us that ICTs are epistemic engines. That is, they are institutions that systematically produce knowledge or find truths. And they do so not only in the way usually recognised in doctrinal scholarly works on international criminal law, i.e. in the sense also emphasised by the ICTR of ‘producing a substantial body of jurisprudence on genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, as well as forms of individual and superior responsibility’. ICTs are epistemic engines also in the sense that they find (or at least claim to find) factual truths about certain past events.
AB - The Chamber, in any case, has one remit - and one remit only - and that is to establish the truth. (Presiding Judge Claude Jorda in the Lubanga confirmation hearing) Gentlemen, please. We are trying to cut out this type of argument. We are running a trial now. We are not a truth commission. That’s the point. (Presiding Judge, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) Introduction The prospects of the imminent closure in 2015 of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) seem to have spawned concern within the tribunal about what kind of legacy it will leave behind. Thus, in an apparent attempt to guide posterity in the right direction, the ICTR has initiated a number of so-called legacy projects, which according to the website The ICTR Remembers are intended to ‘ensure that the valuable lessons learned over the Tribunal’s 20-year history are not lost’. Among the projects, which include a symposium on international criminal law and two documentary films about the ICTR, one project particularly catches the eye. Under the headline ‘The Genocide Story Project’, the ICTR Prosecutor proposes ‘to write an account of the Rwandan Genocide as told through the judgments of the ICTR Trial and the Appeals Chambers’. In his description of the project, the Prosecutor emphasises that ‘this account will not be the story as told by the Prosecutor but, rather, will be the story as told by the ICTR’s judgments. Only those facts that were able to be brought to the courtroom, heard before judges, subjected to cross-examination, analyzed by judges, and finally adjudicated will be included in the narrative’. According to the Prosecutor, this project will provide us with one of ‘the most authoritative accounts of the Genocide compiled to date’. The Prosecutor’s project is interesting because it reminds us that ICTs are epistemic engines. That is, they are institutions that systematically produce knowledge or find truths. And they do so not only in the way usually recognised in doctrinal scholarly works on international criminal law, i.e. in the sense also emphasised by the ICTR of ‘producing a substantial body of jurisprudence on genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, as well as forms of individual and superior responsibility’. ICTs are epistemic engines also in the sense that they find (or at least claim to find) factual truths about certain past events.
KW - Faculty of Law
KW - Den Internationale Straffedomstol
KW - Legitimitet
KW - sandhed
KW - sandhedskommission
KW - sandhed i retten
KW - retsfilosofi
KW - Kleist (Heinrich von)
KW - Bourdieu, Pierre
KW - International Criminal Court
KW - truth
KW - truth and reconciliation
KW - Truth Commissions
KW - legal epistemology
KW - legal truth
KW - Kleist (Heinrich von)
KW - Bourdieu, Pierre
KW - legitimacy
UR - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2692994
U2 - 10.1017/9781316536469.009
DO - 10.1017/9781316536469.009
M3 - Book chapter
SN - 9781107146174
SP - 206
EP - 227
BT - The Legitimacy of International Criminal Tribunals
A2 - Hayashi, Nobuo
A2 - Bailliet, Cecilia M.
PB - Cambridge University Press
CY - Cambridge
ER -
