Vertical Inconsistency of International Sentencing? The ICTY and Domestic Courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Both legal scholars and the general public assume—on the basis of mainly anecdotal evidence—that sentencing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and at the domestic courts is widely inconsistent. As ‘the most responsible’ are sentenced by the ICTY, their allegedly more lenient sentences easily fuel ideas of ‘those most responsible getting off the lightest’. However, no systematic empirical inquiry of sentencing of perpetrators of international crimes committed during the Bosnian war has ever been conducted. This chapter presents findings of an original empirical study comparing sentencing of defendants tried and convicted at the ICTY and those punished by the domestic courts in Bosnia. It discusses cross-fertilization, and discrepancies, between the sentencing jurisprudence and practice of the ICTY and national jurisdictions and refutes the allegations of vertical inconsistency of international sentencing.