Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law

"That’s right. It brings into focus the role of international law, international institutions, and international actors, which are increasingly very influential in shaping domestic decisions about transitional justice. I think Drumbl offers a profound critique of certain expectations of what international criminal tribunals, as well as domestic trials, are able to achieve as a response to mass atrocity. For those who believe these trials are mechanisms of retribution, deterrence, and expressivism—expressing our communal values—Drumbl demonstrates that trials often fall very short in achieving these aims. He also points to the inherent limits of trial and punishment as a way of responding to atrocity, given that they cannot address the conditions that facilitate atrocities. Going back to what we were just talking about, with atrocities you are not just dealing with individual actors who are bad apples, but with rotten systems as well, that facilitate wrongdoing. However, trials deal with individuals. “Drumbl offers a profound critique of expectations of what international criminal tribunals are able to achieve” Drumbl’s book issues a call for crafting international norms and international standards for responses to atrocity so that there can be a place for indigenous values, for restorative processes like truth and reconciliation commissions, and for responses to structural violence and inequality. He tries to find a middle ground between those scholars or practitioners who conceptualize transitional justice as exclusively local and context-specific—one-off responses to wrongdoing—and those who believe there is a general toolkit of responses that will work in any context. Like Teitel’s book, Drumbl’s book is a classic, but in a different way: it examines in detail the place of international law and international tribunals in transitional justice processes, and then sets an agenda for how to do better moving forward. There’s disagreement. One of the interesting things that comes out of Drumbl’s book is that even for participants, including judges, it’s not always clear what exactly the rationale is for these international institutions. Retribution comes up often—meting out justice in a way that’s deserved for those who’ve done serious wrong. But deterrence is also prominent, as well as the aim of expressing the international community’s rejection of the permissibility of certain kinds of conduct, which can be seen either as important for its own sake as well as important for its deterrent effect on future political leaders thinking about engaging in similar kinds of atrocities."