The Ad hoc Tribunals: A Critical Appraisal of their legacy in the 21st Century

Abstract

This thesis seeks to critically appraise the use of ad hoc tribunals as the mechanism to administer justice on the international stage in the 20th century. To do so the first part of the thesis will seek to examine the existing literature relating to the concept of legitimacy and how laws earn their legitimacy, both at national and international level. It will then look at the history of the war crimes doctrine and how that would go on to form the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda respectively, before looking at the two tribunals themselves and how they developed the doctrine during their lifespan. After establishing the key offences of the ad hoc tribunal, it will then look at how these were developed into the offences that became part of the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court as the first permanent international criminal court. The second part of the thesis will develop a model for the future administration of justice and test the measures of legitimacy identified in the first chapter against the model to explore how in the future the maximum number of people can be protected by international criminal law.