Before Nuremberg: Early International Criminal Tribunals

Le Centre pour les droits de la personne et le pluralisme juridique accueille Ziv Bohrer, professeur adjoint, Faculté de droit, Université Bar-Ilan, qui mène actuellement des recherches sur l'histoire du droit pénal international, qui remonte en fait sur plusieurs siècles.

Résumé

(En anglais seulement) The creation of an international criminal tribunal at Nuremberg after WWII, considered the first of its kind, is widely regarded as the ‘birth’ of International Criminal Law (ICL). Dr. Bohrer will challenge this consensus with examples of similar tribunals in every century since late-medieval times. These tribunals are shown to be doctrinally related (to each other, as well as to contemporary ICL), since war crimes have been regarded as universal wrongs for centuries. He will reveal that ICL is not a post-WWII innovation, but rather has a long past, and discusses the central causes of the pretermission of this history. He will conclude with a consideration of the contemporary significance of ICL’s neglected past.