Impartiality Deficit and International Criminal Judging

Abstract

Revival in the 1990s of the international criminal justice project that had been launched decades earlier at Nuremberg and Tokyo has had consequences. As is often noted, many results have been salutary; among them, increased accountability for wrongdoing and a modicum of redress for victims. There has been, however, another, less salutary effect: tribunals' construction and operation sometimes bore the marks of compulsion to convict and inattention to the rights of the accused. This article focuses on how that tendency - called here impartiality - has affected international judging. After addressing the phenomenon at the global level, it looks more specifically at evidence of such a deficit in the operations of one hybrid tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone.