universal justice

Universal jurisdiction is a legal principle that allows states or international organizations to claim criminal jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where the alleged crime was committed, and regardless of the accused's nationality, country of residence, or any other relation to the prosecuting entity. Crimes prosecuted under universal jurisdiction are considered crimes against all, too serious to tolerate jurisdictional arbitrage.

The concept of universal jurisdiction is therefore closely linked to the idea that some international norms are ''erga omnes'', or owed to the entire world community, as well as to the concept of '' jus cogens'' – that certain international law obligations are binding on all states.

According to Amnesty International, a proponent of universal jurisdiction, certain crimes pose so serious a threat to the international community as a whole that states have a logical and moral duty to prosecute an individual responsible; therefore, no place should be a safe haven for those who have committed genocide, crimes against humanity, extrajudicial executions, war crimes, torture, or forced disappearances.

Opponents such as Henry Kissinger, who himself was called to give testimony about the US Government's Operation Condor in a Spanish court, argue that universal jurisdiction is a breach of each state's sovereignty: all states being equal in sovereignty, as affirmed by the United Nations Charter, " despread agreement that human rights violations and crimes against humanity must be prosecuted has hindered active consideration of the proper role of international courts. Universal jurisdiction risks creating universal tyranny – that of judges." According to Kissinger, as a logistical matter, since any number of states could set up such ''universal jurisdiction'' tribunals, the process could quickly degenerate into politically driven show trials to attempt to place a quasi-judicial stamp on a state's enemies or opponents.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1674, adopted by the United Nations Security Council on 28 April 2006, "Reaffirm dthe provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document regarding the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity" and commits the Security Council to action to protect civilians in armed conflict.Security Council passes landmark resolution – world has responsibility to protect people from genocide
Oxfam Press Release – 28 April 2006

History

The '' Institutes of Justinian'', echoing the ''Commentaries'' of Gaius, says that "All nations ... are governed partly by their own particular laws, and partly by those laws which are common to all, hose thatnatural Reason appoints for all mankind." Expanding on the classical understanding of universal law accessible by reason, in the seventeenth century, the Dutch jurist Grotius laid the foundations for universal jurisdiction in modern international law, promulgating in his ''De Jure Praedae'' (''Of the Law of Captures'') and later '' Dē jūre bellī ac pācis'' (''Of the Law of War and Peace'') the Enlightenment view that there are universal principles of right and wrong.

According to Henry Kissinger, at about the same time, international law came to recognize the analogous concept of '' hostēs hūmānī generis'' ("enemies of the human race") applying to pirates or hijackers whose crimes took place outside of nation-state territories, while universal jurisdiction subjecting senior officials or heads of states as criminal subjects was new.

From these premises, representing the Enlightenment belief in trans-territorial, trans-cultural standards of right and wrong, derives universal jurisdiction.

Perhaps the most notable and influential precedent for universal jurisdiction were the mid-20th century Nuremberg Trials. U.S. Justice Robert H. Jackson then chief prosecutor, famously stated that an International Military Tribunal enforcing universal principles of right and wrong could prosecute acts without a particular geographic location, Nazi "crimes against the peace of the world"—even if the acts were perfectly legal at the time in Fascist Germany. Indeed, one charge was Nazi law itself became a crime, law distorted into a bludgeon of oppression. The Nuremberg trials supposed universal standards by which one nation's laws, and acts of its officials, can be judged; an international rule of law unbound by national borders.

On the other hand, even at the time, the Nuremberg trials were criticized as victor's justice, revenge papered over with legal simulacra. US Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone remarked that his colleague Justice Jackson acting as Nuremberg Chief prosecutor was "conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas."

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, argues that universal jurisdiction allowed Israel to try Adolf Eichmann