The Fairness of International Justice

Abstract

Abstract There is an ever-expanding system of international criminal justice in which the concern for fairness is equally as powerful as it is in domestic criminal justice systems, but considerably more fraught with political baggage. The goal of our paper is to develop a model of individual evaluations of fairness of an international court and subject our current understandings of fairness to a challenging test by focusing on those with a tremendous stake in the outcomes of trials—the witnesses. We develop a model that emphasizes three core elements of individual judgments regarding fairness: (1) the identity of the individual—those relatively fixed characteristics that individuals use to explain who they are; (2) the individual encounter with international justice; and (3) general, or more objective indicators of Tribunal effectiveness. We then derive specific hypothesis from these expectations. We utilize data from a unique survey of 300 individuals who testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (icty). We find that identity, personal efficacy and to a lesser extent, the perceived appropriateness of punishment for the guilty affect perceptions of fairness.