Victor's Justice: From Nuremberg to Baghdad By Danilo Zolo
Verso, 2009 Xiii + 189 pages One way to look at war likens it to
domestic crime. If it is wrong for someone to initiate force
against a person who has not violated rights, why should matters
change when a group of people, acting under the command of a
nation's leader, invade the territory of another country?
Further, should not war crimes, i.e., violations of rights
during a war, be treated as criminal offenses as well?
Proponents of this view often suggest that, just as courts
punish individuals within a nation who commit crimes, so should
international courts put on trial and punish political leaders
and soldiers who violate rights.1 Hans Kelsen, the most famous
European legal theorist of the 20th century, suggested in 1944
exactly such a system. In Kelsen's opinion, the principal cause
for the failure of the League of Nations lay in the fact that at
the summit of its power structure was a Council representing a
sort of worldwide political governmen