Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-12T22:36:36.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Atrocity, law, humanity: punishing human rights violators

from Part II - Interconnections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2012

By
Gerry Simpson
Edited by
Conor Gearty  and
Costas Douzinas
Conor Gearty
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Costas Douzinas
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
Get access

Summary

François de Menthon, one of the French Prosecutors at the Nuremberg war crimes trial in 1945, was assigned the task of defining humanity. The context was a trial in which a more or less new legal category – crimes against humanity – had to be created to encompass the system of abuse and murder instituted by the Nazis in the mid 1930s. This development had a spatial imperative (Nazi crimes committed against Germans in Germany fell outside the category of ‘war crimes’, a category encompassing only acts committed against foreign soldiers or civilians), a temporal imperative (war crimes applied only to acts committed during war and excluded peace-time offences) and a moral imperative (it was believed that an unprecedented level of baseness had been reached and that the response to it required a new language and new law).

In its delineation of crimes against humanity, de Menthon’s opening address to the International Military Tribunal invoked three distinguishable concepts. The first was the idea that certain acts were crimes against human beings regardless of the race, religion, national affiliation or ethnicity of the victims. This was international criminal law in its universalising mode, and it was an inspiration for two 1948 landmarks: The Genocide Convention (in the field of criminal law) and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (in the field of human rights law).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law , pp. 114 - 133
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arendt, H., Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (London: Penguin Classics 2006; first published 1963)Google Scholar
Bass, G., Stay the Hand of Vengeance (Princeton University Press 2000)Google Scholar
Beckett, A., Pinochet in Piccadilly (London: Faber & Faber 2002)Google Scholar
Blackburn, R., ‘Reclaiming Human Rights’ (2011) 69 New Left Review126–38Google Scholar
Binder, G., ‘Representing Nazism: Advocacy and Identity at the Trail of Klaus Barbie’ (1989) 98 Yale Law Journal1321–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years’ Crisis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2001)Google Scholar
Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 1984
Cryer, R., Prosecuting International Crimes: Selectivity and the International Criminal Law Regime (Cambridge University Press 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cryer, R., ‘International Criminal Law vs State Sovereignty: Another Round?’ (2006) 16 European Journal of International Law979CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, L., The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2001Google Scholar
Drumbl, M., Atrocity, Punishment and International Law (New York: Cambridge University Press 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, R. J., ‘The Scramble for Europe’ (2011) London Review of Books, 3 February 17–19Google Scholar
Finkielkraut, A., Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes against Humanity (Lapidus, R., trans.) with Godfrey, S., introduction by Kaplan, A. Y. (New York: Columbia University Press 1992)Google Scholar
Fussell, P., The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975)Google Scholar
Hunt, L., Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: W.W. Norton 2007)Google Scholar
Af Jochnick, C. and Normand, R., ‘The Legitimation of Violence: A Critical Analysis of the Gulf War’ (1994) 35 (2) Harvard International Law Journal387–416Google Scholar
Kirchheimer, O., Political Justice (Princeton University Press 1960)Google Scholar
Kontorovich, E., ‘The Piracy Analogy: Universal Jurisdiction’s Hollow Foundation’ (2004) 4 Harvard Journal of International Law183Google Scholar
Kraus, K., The Last Days of Mankind (play) (1915–19)
Luban, D., ‘The Legacies of Nuremberg’ (1987) 54 (4) Social Research779–829Google Scholar
Mann, T., The Magic Mountain (New York: Vintage Books 1996) (1st edn 1924)Google Scholar
Mégret, F., ‘The Politics of International Criminal Justice’ (2002) 13 (5) European Journal of International Law1261–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Menthon, F., ‘Opening Address (January 17, 1946)’, in Marrus, M. R. (ed.), The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial 1945–46: A Documentary History (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s 1997)Google Scholar
Moyn, S., The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2010)Google Scholar
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act (2011) (UK) s. 153,
Rediker, M. , Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (New York: Verso 2004)Google Scholar
The Report of the Baha Mousa Inquiry (8 September 2011),
Röling, B., The Tokyo Trial and Beyond (Cambridge: Polity 1991)Google Scholar
Schmitt, C., The Nomos of the Earth (New York: Telos 2003)Google Scholar
Schwarzenberger, G., International Law and Totalitarian Lawlessness (London: Jonathan Cape 1943)Google Scholar
Shklar, J., Legalism: Law and Ideology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1964)Google Scholar
Simpson, G., Law, War and Crime (Cambridge: Polity 2007)Google Scholar
Steiner, G., The Death of Tragedy (London: Faber & Faber 1961).Google Scholar
Strachey, L., Literary Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1949)Google Scholar
Teitel, R., Humanity’s Law (Oxford University Press 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UN Commission on Human Rights, Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law (19 April 2005),
de Menthon, F., ‘Opening Address (January 17, 1946’, in Marrus, M. R. (ed.), The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial 1945–46: A Documentary History (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s 1997)Google Scholar
Arendt, H., Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (London: Penguin Classics 2006; first published 1963)Google Scholar
Beckett, A., Pinochet in Picadilly (London: Faber & Faber 2002)Google Scholar
‘Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of War and on Enforcement of Penalties – Report Presented to the Preliminary Peace Conference’ (1920) 14 AJIL95.CrossRef
Hunt, L., Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: W. W. Norton 2007)Google Scholar
Blackburn, R., ‘Reclaiming Human Rights’ (2010) 69 New Left Review126–38Google Scholar
Moyn, S., The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)Google Scholar
Rediker, M., Villans of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (New York: Verso 2004)Google Scholar
Kontorovich, E., ‘The Piracy Analogy: Universal Jurisdiction’s Hollow Foundation’ (2004) 4 Harvard Journal of International Law183;Google Scholar
Simpson, G., Law, War and Crime (Cambridge: Polity 2007)Google Scholar
Hochschild, A., King Leopold’s Ghost (New York: Houghton Mifflin 1998)Google Scholar
Fawcett, B., Cambodia (New York: Columbia University Press 1986)Google Scholar
Twain, M., King Leopold’s Soliloquy (Philadelphia, PA: Warren Co. 1905)Google Scholar
Strachey, L., Literary Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.1949)
Bass, G., Stay the Hand of Vengeance (Princeton University Press 2000) 68.Google Scholar
Evans, R. J., ‘The Scramble for Europe’ (2011) London Review of Books, 3 February 17–19.Google Scholar
Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years’ Crisis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2001)Google Scholar
Schmitt, C., The Nomos of the Earth (New York: Telos 2003) 123.Google Scholar
Prosecutor v. Muammar Gaddafi, Said Al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdullah Sanussi ICC-01/11-01/11 (2011)
Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milosević (Amended Indictment) IT-02-54-T (22 November 2002)
Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstić IT-98-33-T, Judgment (2 August 2001)
Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu ICTR-96-4-T, Judgment (2 September 1998)
Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić IT-94-1-A, Judgment (15 July 1999)
Teitel, R., Humanity’s Law (Oxford University Press 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cryer, R., ‘International Criminal Law vs State Sovereignty: Another Round?’ (2006) 16 European Journal of International Law979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prosecutor v. Anto Furundžija IT-9-17/1-T, Judgment (10 December 1998)
Prosector v. Dario Kordić and Mario Čerkez IT-95-14/2-A, Appeal Judgment (17 December 2004)
Prosecutor v. Dragoljub Kunarac et al. IT-96-23-T and IT-96-23/1-T, Judgment (22 February 2001)
Mégret, F., ‘The Politics of International Criminal Justice’ (2002) 13 (5) European Journal of International Law1261–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Judgment (1 October 1946) (1947) 41 AJIL 172.
Cryer, R., Prosecuting International Crimes: Selectivity and the International Criminal Law Regime (Cambridge University Press 2005) 233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yassin Abdullah Kadi & Al Barakaat International Foundation v. Council & Commission (Joined cases C-402/05P and C-415/05P) European Court of Justice, Judgment (3 September 2008)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×