Abstract
It is not clear what there is left for a commentator to say once a symposium has unfolded in such a way as to cancel itself out. But in case others read it differently than I do, I am happy to explain how I think this process occurs across the wonderful though self-canceling pages of the American Journal of International Law symposium on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and—through valedictory reflection on thoseenter prises—on contemporary international criminal law so far. The self-cancellation process, as I see it, takes place in the move from creation story and doctrinal evolution to impact measurement amidst legacy rhetoric. One might take this result as an index of where things stand (or whether anything stands) in the fascinating emergence of a prestigious enterprise—and what might come next.
Highlights
It is not clear what there is left for a commentator to say once a symposium has unfolded in such a way as to cancel itself out
The self-cancellation process, as I see it, takes place in the move from creation story and doctrinal evolution to impact measurement amidst legacy rhetoric. One might take this result as an index of where things stand in the fascinating emergence of a prestigious enterprise—and what might come
In the absence of other agents, it seemed critical for states to act to prevent and punish such outrages. In this rich and specific context, that the first move towards international criminal accountability occurred in response to the shock of atrocity on the European continent—at a moment when European identity depended so much on its sense of having put the Holocaust behind it—even though the subsequent geography of the field has been essentially postcolonial and “southern.” It was in part for this reason, as Matheson and Scheffer nervously admit, that the new international criminal accountability reversed the priorities of the very Nuremberg precedent it has so often claimed to honor, by demoting aggression as “counterproductive”3.4
Summary
It is not clear what there is left for a commentator to say once a symposium has unfolded in such a way as to cancel itself out.
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