ABSTRACT
National legal systems allocate different responsibilities to criminal and civil law, but common to all legal systems is a set of fundamental sanctioning goals for the protection, restoration, and improvement of public order. Criminal tribunals involve the identification of perpetrators of violations of the law, confirmation of the norms that apply, and the imposition of penalties. Human rights law, the law of state responsibility, and the more recent "liability without fault" regime, provide substantive and procedural standards for state and nonstate actors as well as guidance for compensation tribunals. Tribunals in the international context also encounter a "fit" problem. In liberal societies, the criminal law model presupposes some moral choice or moral freedom on the part of the putative criminal. The tribunal model is much more satisfying in a moral and legal sense because it provides vivid confirmation of international authority.
