When former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London at the request of a Spanish judge, the world's attention was focused for the first time on the idea of universal jurisdiction. Universal jurisdiction stands for the principle that atrocities such as genocide, torture, and war crimes are so heinous and so universally abhorred that any state is entitled to prosecute these crimes in its national courts regardless of where they were committed or the nationality of the perpetrators or the victims. In 2001, two Rwandan nuns were convicted in a Belgian court for atrocities committed in Rwanda against Rwandans. Serbs have been prosecuted in German courts, and a court in Senegal asserted universal jurisdiction over the former dictator of Chad, Hissene Habre. Universal jurisdiction is becoming a potent instrument of international law, but it is poorly understood by legal experts and remains a mystery to most public officials and citizens.
Universal Jurisdiction brings together leading scholars to discuss the origins, evolution, and implications of this legal weapon against impunity. They examine the questions that cloud its future, and its role in specific cases involving Adolf Eichmann, Pinochet, Habre, and former Rwandan government officials, among others, in order to determine the proper place of universal jurisdiction in the emerging regime of international legal accountability.

Universal jurisdiction is becoming a potent instrument of international law, but it is poorly understood by legal experts and remains a mystery to most public officials and citizens.

About the Author
Stephen Macedo is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and Director of the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He chairs the Princeton Project on Universal Jurisdiction, where this book originated.

Reviews
"This particular publication is likely to become an essential one in the analysis of jurisprudential bases for the heinous activity that such jurisdiction is bound to eradicate." * American Society of International Law Newsletter *



Book Information
ISBN 9780812219500
Author Stephen Macedo
Format Paperback
Page Count 392
Imprint University of Pennsylvania Press
Publisher University of Pennsylvania Press