Articles |
Procedural Innovations in War Crimes Trials
1 Geoffrey Nice QC is Principal Trial Attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), ICTY. Philippe Vallières-Roland is a Legal Officer, OTP, ICTY. Geoffrey Nice led the prosecution in the earlier trials of Kordi
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erkez and Jelisi, and he now leads the Milo
evi prosecution team. Philippe Vallières-Roland has previously been involved in the Kunarac and Krnojelac cases and has been one of the few lawyers associated with the prosecution of the Miloevi case since its beginning in February 2002. He was involved in the preparation of the arguments in support of procedural innovations before the Appeals Chamber. The views expressed herein are those of the authors alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Tribunal or the United Nations in general. The authors would like to thank Fergal Gaynor, Legal Officer, OTP, ICTY, for his extremely valuable assistance through the editing process of this article. [geoffreynice{at}hotmail.com]
International Criminal Tribunals created by the UN Security Council have been criticized because trials have been too slow. This article examines a number of procedural innovations attempted during the Kordi and Miloevi trials, which were intended to remedy this defect. It is argued in this paper that common law is imperfect generally, and probably ill-suited for war crimes trials. The new hybrid tribunals and the International Criminal Court will no doubt draw from the jurisprudence and practice of the International Tribunals. The authors suggest that they will have to, up to a degree, depart from the overly conservative procedural approaches adopted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia if they are to remain credible in the eyes of the international community.