Taking Milosevic Seriously: The Politics of International Justice.

On March 11, 2006, Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was found dead in his cell at the Hague. This sudden death of the man once reviled as the ?Butcher of the Balkans? seems to have marked the disappearance of interest in not just the International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia (ICTY), but also the kind of charges that were leveled by Milosevic during the course of his long defense. We argue in this paper that this unwarranted inattention has potentially troubling consequences for the shaping of the contemporary international legal order and the way in which we, as scholars, make sense of it. For, at the very least, the ICTY was the progenitor to the International Criminal Court and marked an important constitutive moment in the shaping of the present global order ? a fact that makes it deserving of greater scholarly scrutiny. Accordingly, this paper engages in a critical examination of the empirical record and normative implications of the ICTY, particularly the debates surrounding the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. During the decade-long period of its existence, the ICTY has been hailed by scholars and policy-makers alike as a major advancement in an international rule of law, one that avoids the flaws of ?victors? justice? and politicization that plagued the post-WWII trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo. Scholars have of course acknowledged, and even been critical of the limitations imposed by the structure of the court and the extent of its jurisdiction, particularly its inability to scrutinize the war crimes charges against NATO. However, they have for the most part tended to downplay this aspect, choosing instead to adopt a celebratory and ?realistic? tone over the small strides made in the realm of international law within the constraints imposed by the existing power realities. In our paper, we forgo such ?realism? to interrogate the nature and implications of the ICTY and the trial of Milosevic. We not only examine the degree to which the United States and other NATO powers exerted a political influence on the ICTY prosecution, but also make connections between the objections put forth by Milosevic, and those raised by participants at Tokyo and Nuremberg. We conclude by exploring the ramifications of the limited and problematic model of international justice offered by the ICTY. In this regard, without necessarily defending him, we argue that taking Milosevic seriously is a crucial step in developing a truly universal and fair system of international justice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]