ABSTRACT
The movement to construct institutions and regimes that would allow the international prosecution of those individuals who have committed geno-cide, war crimes, and other crimes against humanity has become a salient force in contemporary international politics. Presumably, the modern laws of war would preclude Alexander the Great’s punishment of the citizens of Tyre for their resistance (he crucified 2,000 young men, positioning them along the main road along the Lebanese coast) or the Roman “final solution” to Cato’s perception of threat presented by Carthage ( Carthago delenda est, or “Carthage must be destroyed”). Perhaps the first modern trials were those of individuals (Bonapartists charged with treason) who helped Napoleon escape from exile in Elba and then joined in the Hundred Days in which he attempted to regain power. As a recent commentator noted, in contrast, in the twentieth century, international war crime tribunals have become “a recurring modern phenomenon with discernible patterns.” 1 Nuremberg stands as the model, but Leipzig and Constantinople after World War I; the less well known Tokyo trials after World War II; the ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and the former Yugoslavia; and the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) also need examination.
