International lawyers

Yesterday I went to an international law conference commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremberg Trials were set up by the victorious Allied powers at the end of World War Two to prosecute many of the main political and military leaders of Nazi Germany.*

The conference was great fodder for any international criminal law, despite the fact that it was held on a Saturday. Still, it was a tad depressing that most of the lectures and workshops had a very technocratic flavour. For example, the workshop on the crime of aggression didn't even mention Iraq, let alone the political dimensions that shape great power motivations towards committing acts of aggression. Instead, most of the discussion focused on the lack of a satisfactory definition of what exactly constitutes a crime of aggression. To be sure, an important and interesting issue. But surely a more important issue is trying to work out what exactly motivates nation states to commit acts of aggression?

Things got a little more interesting when the one real leftie in the workshop, who also happened to be a non-lawyer, asked whether any piece-of-paper definition would mean much to those states powerful enough to commit acts of aggression and get away with it. He was roundly howled down, and it was clear that the howlers (who were all government lawyers, some of them people I know professionally) were clearly on a different wave length. It were as if they were speaking a different language. What surprised me was my own reaction. I didn't say too much because I literally found myself getting very angry, to the extent that I was scared that if I spoke I would start shouting.** Afterwards, Mr Real Leftie and I concluded that it was time to have a drink, or two.

The whole discussion reminded me of that very special form of naivety that lawyers suffer from, especially in developed nations with a relatively good record of rule of law. There's this assumption that lawyers work with, unless they are powerful or counsel the powerful. In fact, there are two main assumptions. The first is the presumption of the equality of laws - that all laws are equal and implemented accordingly. The second is that laws alone are what administer societial structures and standards. The naivety of these assumptions are exacerbated in international law, where the actions of states and corporate power are fairly crude, to put it lightly. There is close to zero discourse by international lawyers on the rule of brute power, or the notion that power is a law unto itself. Listening to people 'discuss' the crime of aggression in that workshop was very much like listening to people discuss how many angels fit on a pin head. There was no real discussion of realpolitik, and it was assumed that countries always base their international actions on some international legal principle lest they offend international law.

Other than that, perhaps the highlight of the conference was a question from Prof Hilary Charlesworth to Sir Ninian Stevens, former G-G of Australia and judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She asked Stevens if the Nuremberg trials amounted to victor's justice given the Allies' conduct during the war was never addressed.

Sir Ninian basically shrugged his (somewhat senile) shoulders and said we had to be'realistic' - no victor is ever going to have their own crimes scrutinised. But we should still be thankful for the advancements of international criminal justice made during Nuremberg. As he said the, I literally imagined Emmanuel Kant rolling in his grave somewhere in Europe. Still, I guess at least Sir Ninian was honest. I can think of the odd eminent jurist who would've simple remarked - 'Allies commit war crimes? Are you insane? We're the good guys!'

* Many others, including Werner von Braun, the father of the United States' missile technology, were given an amnesty.
** Yes, shout, like at the frosty old international law lecturer who wondered what else the West could do but invade dictatorial third world states in which the population is powerless to vanquish the dictator. I gently reminded him that it would help if the West didn't arm said dictators! Ok, so I didn't entirely shut up, nor did I shout either.