Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice, Revised and Updated Edition - Softcover

Robertson, Geoffrey

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9781595580719: Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice, Revised and Updated Edition

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595580719 ISBN 13: 9781595580719

Publisher: New Press, 2007

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The story of the rise of the human rights movement by the renowned international attorney, in a newly revised and expanded edition.

For centuries it seemed an impossible dream that international institutions could ever tell nation-states how to treat their own citizens. But after a century in which 160 million lives have been wasted by war, genocide, and torture, the worldwide human rights movement is gaining popular and political strength.

In a book that has been called "an epic work" by The Times (London), Geoffrey Robertson, one of the world's leading human rights lawyers, weaves together disparate strands of history, philosophy, international law, and politics to show how an identification of the crime against humanity, first defined at Nuremberg, has become the key that unlocks the closed door of state sovereignty, enabling the international community to bring tyrants and torturers to heel.

This newly revised and expanded edition features additional chapters on Iraq and Guant�namo, and incorporates insights from the author's experience since 2002 as a UN appeals judge for the Special Court on war crimes in Sierra Leone. Robertson also brings us up to date on the trials against Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein and the International Criminal Court at Darfur.

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About the Author:

Geoffrey Robertson, QC, has appeared as counsel in many landmark human rights cases, including the trial that exposed Iraqgate. He is head of Doughty Street Chambers in London and visiting professor in human rights at Birkbeck College. His previous books include Freedom, the Individual, and the Law; Media Law; and a memoir, The Justice Game. He lives in London. Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch.

From Publishers Weekly:

A British lawyer long involved in human rights observations and tribunals, Robinson writes of the history and the contemporary politics of international human rights. He devotes a chapter each to the history of human rights law; the case of General Pinochet; the "Guernica Paradox" (that is, bombing in the service of human rights); the International Court; and recent events in the Balkans, East Timor, Latin America and the U.S. An unabashed supporter of international military intervention, Robinson puts individuals' rights above the right of national sovereignty. Passionate almost to a fault, he occasionally even argues that morality, the defense of human rights, should supersede the rule of international law. To his credit, he is consistently willing to criticize all sidesAand he does criticize the U.S. Congress (for what he says is its occasional desire to place U.S. interests above international human rights), U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (for what Robinson considers his occasional incompetence) and anyone who'd excuse human rights violations in the name of cultural relativism. The author's disgust with the U.N.'s inaction leads him to propose that the human rights community form a separate organization to deal with the issue. At times, Robinson's intense focus on law may blind him to important holes in his argument. But overall, this is an erudite book that adds sophistication to the debate on a crucial subject. (Aug.)
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