Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities in International Law: Beyond the Nuremberg Legacy

By Steven R. Ratner, Jason S. Abrams, James L. Bischoff

Book Overview

The fall of dictatorial regimes and the eruption of destructive civil conflicts around the world have led to calls for holding individuals accountable for human rights atrocities. This book offers a comprehensive study of the promise and limitations of international criminal law as a means of enforcing international human rights and humanitarian law. It provides a searching analysis of the principal crimes under the law of nations, such as genocide and crimes against humanity and an appraisal of the most important prosecutorial and other mechanisms developed to bring individuals to justice. After applying their conclusions in a detailed case study, the authors offer a series of compelling conclusions on the prospects for accountability.

This fully updated new edition also contains expanded coverage of the increasing numbers of international criminal trials including the cases of Bosnia, Serbia, and East Timor. It also explores individual accountability for terrorist acts and accountability for acts undertaken in the name of counter-terrorism policy, and provides expanded coverage of aggression and crimes against peace.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199546673
• ISBN13: 9780199546671
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Crimes Against Humanity Book

This is an excellent, short alternative to bigger and more well-known textbooks on crimes against humanity. It's very scholary, well-researched, and offers the case study of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It addresses many theoretical as well as practical issues of international law. It lists (p. 77) crimes against humanity as murder, extermination, enslavement, forced labor, deportation and unjustified or cruel forced population transfers, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual abuse, inhumane acts constituting severe attacks on the human person, persecution that denies basic human rights, certain severe deprivations of property, and disappearances without proof of murder. Without being overly legalistic, the book goes into how to investigate and prosecute such crimes which would be very useful for those seeking greater "accountability" in the world today.

An incredibly in depth review of a terrible legal dilemma

Abrams and Ratner provide an excellent in depth review of the legal and moral difficulties in bringing perpertrators of genocide to justice.