[lbo-talk] Ace nails it

socialismorbarbarism socialismorbarbarism at gmail.com
Wed May 27 08:54:50 PDT 2009


On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:13 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote: "No. All these "advances" have been instances of winner's justice. You are completely safe from being prosecuted for war crimes as long as your state wins the war. If you lose the war, you can get prosecuted for war crimes whether or not you committed any. War-crimes trials are almost always a travesty of justice. The Nuremberg Trials set a very bad precedent."

Let's leave aside for the moment how the attempted prosecution of a Chilean political criminal, a former head of state, under Spanish jurisdiction constitutes "winner's justice"--I missed that Spanish-Chilean war. But your use of "precedent" must be incorrect, on two levels. On one level, if one assumes that Nuremberg (and Nuremberg itself was not my example) was simply an involved case of winner's justice than nothing new has been established--winner's justice is the historical and, for all intents and purposes, legal norm, and is implicit (well, maybe explicit) in the very conception of the sovereign state. On a second level, if Nuremberg was merely a series of show trials, with an understanding that its professed legal norms can never in fact be applied to the prosecutors' side, then no legal precedent has been set.

"War-crimes trials are almost always a travesty of justice..."

Almost always? Some weren't, then? Which?

"You are completely safe from being prosecuted for war crimes as long as your state wins the war."

The Pinochet indictments put this into question. That was my point.

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:13 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> socialismorbarbarism wrote:
>>
>>
>> It has  been moving slowly, but the 20th C. saw the first inroads
>> against impunity by criminal-leaders of "sovereign" nation-states, and
....



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list