  The need to provide victims with meaningful, respectful public forums in which they can tell their stories and receive a degree of acknowledgment, central to the fifth aim, also comes into conflict with some of the basic commitments of legalism. Criminal trials usually focus on the interests of the defendants. A respectable criminal trial cannot be a platform for victims to tell their stories in an uninterrupted fashion. Since the testimony of victims is instrumental for proving indictments, it is most often subject to interruptions and vigorous cross-examination. As a result, a typical criminal procedure can be quite an adversarial experience for victims. This is true in spite of a recent expansion of the role of victims in international criminal law. In fact, an undue expansion of that role creates the grounds for criticizing international criminal law for abandoning some of its legalist underpinnings (see, for example, Rauschenbach and Scalia 2008).