1 In his separate opinion in the Nuclear Weapons case, Judge Mohammed Bed- oui, then the President of the International Court of Justice, called nuclear we- ons “the absolute evil. ” There are a few other things which merit being called - solutely evil. They are the predicates of the International Criminal Court and of various domestic laws patterned on the Rome Statute: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression. A conference organized by the Berlin-based Republikanischer Anwältinnen- und Anwälteverein (Republican Lawyers As- ciation) and the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights was held in Berlin in June 2005 under the title Globalverfassung versus Realpolitik (Global Constitution versus Realpolitik). It dealt with the tension between these univ- sally accepted norms and the actual practice of governments in an age charact- ized by the ill-defined concept of the “war on terror. ” This book is the outcome of that conference. It is intended for a wide variety of readers: academics, all kinds of jurists, as well as human rights activists, who sometimes know more about the applicable law than the legal experts. It owes its existence to a paradox: On the one hand, new structures for dealing with the most serious international crimes are being put into place.
Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Wolfgang Kaleck
Crimes Against Humanity Immunity International Criminal Court Rwanda Universal Jurisdiction War Crimes
From the reviews:
"The volume is a collection of essays that investigate current developments in the prosecution of human rights crimes on the national and international levels. … Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." (E. W. Webking, CHOICE, Vol. 45 (2), 2007)
"A timely and informative book that aims to assist a wide variety of readers interested in this area of law: academics, jurists, practitioners and human rights activists. … The book contains very interesting and valuable information on the theory and practice of international justice. … this book is essential reading for anyone who is generally interested in the relationship between law and politics at the international level and, in particular, in employing and/or analysing the use of international criminal law to enforce human rights." (Gabriela Echeverria, Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 8 (3), 2008)