The Kosovo Specialist Chambers The last resort for justice in Kosovo?, by Maria Stefania Cataleta and Chiara Loiero, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2021, 180 pp.
A universal value is stymied by particularistic thinking. It is a matter of experience that in all societies torn by violence – but indeed even in societies at large – persons are unable to think in a reciprocal and equal way under the polar star of the Kantian imperative. On the contrary, they view persons having committed even most heinous crimes under the lens of political considerations of a particularistic nature. Thus, a person is a national hero or a war criminal according to the side where a person stands. The same acts can for the same person be heroic or criminal according to whether they are done by friends or by foe. During the Bosnian war, the communities in the former Yugoslavia reasoned more than largely on such fault lines.… There seems to be an inability of a greater number of persons to attach to the acts and only to the acts, and to condemn them from whichever side they come when they are criminal. — Robert Kolb, Preface
In an exquisitely cogent preface, Robert Kolb, Professor of Public International Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Geneva, distills the particularistic nature of ad hoc or hybrid international(ized) criminal tribunals and courts, which, in part, due to political considerations, are incapable of delivering unqualified/objective local acceptance. This is not necessarily because of the quality of justice – though there is much that can be said about the unevenness in charging and the more-than-the-occasional unimpressive qualifications of some judges – but because, to use an aphorism, acceptance or rejection of the judicial process and results is dependent on whose ox is being gored. Continue reading “Book Review: The Kosovo Specialist Chambers The last resort for justice in Kosovo?”