‘One of the Challenges that Can Plausibly Be Raised Against Them’? On the Role of Truth in Debates about the Legitimacy of International Criminal Tribunals

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 -