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The Art of Judicial Reasoning pp 51–64Cite as

A Different Level, a Different Purpose? Reflections on International Criminal Law from the Perspective of Penal Theory

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Abstract

Twenty-two years after the Srebrenica genocide, the worst war crime post World War II, the former Serbian general Ratko Mladić was sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 November 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (“ICTY”) in The Hague. Shortly before it closed as an institution, the Tribunal thus once again attracted attention with its high-profile conviction. The reaction was considerable. Although there was satisfaction at Mladić’s sentence in many quarters, the judgment unsurprisingly met with rejection in the Balkans, for example in parts of Serbia where Mladić is sometimes still being celebrated as a war hero. By imposing the penalty of life imprisonment, the Tribunal had opted for the most severe of all the penal sanctions available to it.

President of the Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland, and Court Clerk, Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland, respectively.

Translated from German by Harvey Jessop.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In general, Rohde (1997).

  2. 2.

    Hassemer (2008), p. 10.

  3. 3.

    Köhler and Saner (1985), p. 90.

  4. 4.

    Sachs (2015), p. 35.

  5. 5.

    Zürcher (2014), p. 36.

  6. 6.

    Zürcher (2014), p. 63.

  7. 7.

    Sachs (2015), p. 259; the author refers there to Antony Duff’s ideas.

  8. 8.

    Zürcher (2014), p. 64.

  9. 9.

    Sachs (2015), p. 38 f.

  10. 10.

    Zürcher (2014), p. 82.

  11. 11.

    Neubacher (2005), p. 257.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., p. 256.

  13. 13.

    Mahlmann (2015), p. 136.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., p. 137.

  15. 15.

    Reese (2006), p. 71.

  16. 16.

    Neubacher (2006), p. 22 et seq.

  17. 17.

    For example, the reports of prison psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelly at the Nuremberg trials, in: El-Hai (2013).

  18. 18.

    Neubacher (2006), p. 25 et seq.

  19. 19.

    Werle (2012), p. 105 et seq.

  20. 20.

    Werle (2001), p. 282.

  21. 21.

    Inter alia, ICTY, Dražen Erdemović, (Sentencing Judgment), 1996, IT-96-22-T, paragraph 58.

  22. 22.

    Neubacher (2008), p. 119.

  23. 23.

    Möller (2003), p. 453.

  24. 24.

    Sloane (2007), p. 80.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., p. 81.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., p. 81.

  27. 27.

    Hobbes, cited by ibid.

  28. 28.

    Möller (2003), p. 496.

  29. 29.

    Ibid.

  30. 30.

    Jäger (1995), p. 342.

  31. 31.

    Möller (2003), p. 466.

  32. 32.

    Spiegel Online (2017).

  33. 33.

    Ibid.

  34. 34.

    Hörnle (2011), p. 29 et seq.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 42.

  36. 36.

    Zürcher (2014), p. 84.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., p. 85.

  38. 38.

    Höffe (1999), p. 367 et seq.

  39. 39.

    Neubacher (2006), p. 29.

  40. 40.

    Duff (2014), p. 19.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., p. 19.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., p. 20.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., p. 19.

  44. 44.

    Ibid., p. 20.

  45. 45.

    Willeke (2017).

  46. 46.

    A similar example with a similar conclusion can be found in Sachs (2015), p. 326 et seq.

  47. 47.

    Duff (2014), p. 20.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., p. 18.

  49. 49.

    Strub (2008), p. 347.

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  1. Federal Administrative Court, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Jean-Luc Baechler

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assisted by Gian-Flurin Steinegger

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  1. EFTA Court, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

    Gunnar Selvik , Michael-James Clifton , Theresa Haas , Luísa Lourenço  & Kerstin Schwiesow , , ,  & 

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Baechler, JL., assisted by Gian-Flurin Steinegger. (2019). A Different Level, a Different Purpose? Reflections on International Criminal Law from the Perspective of Penal Theory. In: Selvik, G., Clifton, MJ., Haas, T., Lourenço, L., Schwiesow, K. (eds) The Art of Judicial Reasoning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02553-3_5

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