Customer Reviews

Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice

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Geoffrey Robertson's "Crimes Against Humanity" is a thoughtful and thorough analysis of modern attempts at global justice. I have struggled with this issue for some time and have found most books of little help, perhaps because the amount of material to be digested is so substantial. Robertson does an excellent job of assembling, organizing, and presenting an extremely complex body of knowledge. There are many books on individual topics covered here and some readers would no doubt like their pet topics to have been discussed in more detail. The beauty of the book, however, is not in its detailed coverage of any single issue, but in it ability to integrate a large number of topics (e.g., the Lieber Code, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,The Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg, Truth Commissions, International Criminal Court, etc.). The author is able to show how these various issues are connected in a string of advances toward a global system of human rights -- advances that are admittedly glacial in their pace but advances nonetheless. Anyone who has tried to organize this vast body of knowledge can appreciate what Robertson has accomplshed. A fine companion to this book is Samantha Power's book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide." Taken together, these two books will take the reader a long way toward understanding international efforts at global justice.

Now in its third edition, this mainstay textbook on the subject just keeps getting bigger, and one might say better. Whereas in earlier editions, the author was known to write in a somewhat dry, analytical tone, with some excellent categorical or structural analysis, I might add, the tone is now almost conversational, with the author telling "the story of human rights." The "story" pervades the first five or six chapters, and consists of little snippets or witty comments lamenting the fact that someone didn't do this or that. The meaty stuff includes chapter 8 (the Pinochet case), chapter 9 (the Milosvic case), chapter 11 (Kosovo), and chapter 13 (the last chapter, on Saddam Hussein). There is only one chapter on terrorism (12) and it's mostly devoted to the Guantanamo Bay issue. Overall, the book may be essential reading, and it does make the complex simple, but it is an overview book and the kind of thing which is sufficient only for beginners because there are lots of areas where the reader might want to do some more research and all they are given are little snippets or emotive hints of something.

A thoroughly enjoyable book. Excellent for someone who has basic knowledge of international and human rights law and who wishes to see things from a different perspective.

As a law student I found this book to be pleasantly refreshing when compared with the usual mind-numbing textbooks on international law. There are only two relatively negative things I can say about this book. Having read through this book a couple of times I found that it feels somewhat rushed, and also there is a tendency to make sweeping statements in places.

Yet overall I loved this book from page one and it really is easy to read yet makes you think. Highly recommended for anyone who wishes to know more about the practical side of international and human rights law, and also specifically for law students, because this is a book that tells you some things that are not even mentioned in your law course. I particularly loved Geoffrey's dry humour which pervades this book.

Geoffrey Robertson is a passionate advocate of human rights - and (possibly paradoxically) of the ability to affect them within the system/s in which we try to enforce them. This book makes no claim to be a perfect history, but knowing Robertson's experience, we are better to hear his opinion and understanding than a dry history of the progress of human rights law itself. If you love this book, good. If you hate it, good. The idea is to make you think about it... and that is what Robertson is best at. This may be the only law history book you will ever read which will make you laugh and cry - occasionally at the same time. I read some other reviews of this and am saddened at their negativity - Robertson has personal experience most "experts" never have, and combines that with a wicked wit, enormous intelligence and a humanitarian heart. This is some book, and Geoffrey Robertson is some man - read whatever you can of his.

Crimes against humanity is a very comprehensive review of the human rights directed at readers not well versed in law. The author, Geoffrey Robertson, an accomplished lawyer and advocate of human rights, does an superb job of discussing the origins of modern human rights, and their development to the present day, (the updated edition covers the Iraq war.)

He laments the repeated failures of members of the international community to uphold human rights when it is in their interest. Yet he does so with reason, fairness and empathy (not sympathy) for countries who abuse human rights as well as the UN which has failed to protect human rights so often. For example he blasts all of the big 5 members of the security council at various times for abusing their veto powers. He also criticises the small enclaves such as Lichtenstein, Monaco and the Vatican who abuse their voting power in the general assembly which is equivalent to that of China or India.

At the same time he talks up the progress that human rights have made in recent years, something that is rarely acknowledged. The leaders of nations now fear that they might one day fall into the grasp of justice, and the US can no longer support despotic regimes throughout the world.

This book serves as an excellent introduction to the broader issue of human rights for those who are not well read on this subject. It is a quite long, and can become tedious at times, but it is not dry like I assume a law textbook must be. Nor is it a one sided attack by some commentator which seeks to popularise the author's agenda.

At 609 pages this is a lengthy read on a difficult subject; Robertson deals with it logically and often with charm and wit (perhaps a useful coping mechanism for such a depressing subject). We clearly have a long way to go to achieve a more humane world. Robertson traces the history of the concept of crimes against humanity from the trial of Charles I in 1649 and the landmark work of Grotius, in particular focusing on developments post Nuremberg, to the present day (2006). Obviously the Bush administration cops a bit of a flogging on its more recent demurring as a human rights leader but it is pleasing to see the people of America reaffirming their common decency and insisting the US resume this role. Robertson's book will help us all think more clearly on this complex subject and make the world a better place.

Geoffrey has done a very good job of adding to the debate on the role of Human Rights in today's globalising international society. His study covers the beginnings of the Human rights crusade with the birth of the UN and continues its evolution to the bloody fields of Kosovo. At its best, Crimes against Humanity is a cleverly argued case for the rule of law in international relations. The dry humour in relation to many of the unpublicised aspects of UN human rights activities is also a welcome highlight. Where it understandibly gets bogged down are the sections where he sorts, in detail, the various statues that underly the human rights facilities employed by the UN and various other bodies. Despite his pleadings at the start of the book, its is not simplified enough. Perhaps this is more of a reflection on international law than the book, but the criticism stands. An effort worthy of Praise in an area that requires more books like this to educate a sometimes apathetic public.

I bought this book for my university class, but I doubt we will get through it in our class, so I plan on reading it on my own, too. It's an incredibly well written book, and in a non-complex academic tone, I mean it's very smart, but I imagine a high school level or maybe even a middle school student could get into this book. Great for your home library collection. It will move you, frustrate you, inspire you, leave you hopeless and hopefull on various topics on our global issues - specifically human rigts.

Before 1990, international law was a dead letter office. Its foundations post-dated a universal church and pre-dated the Enlightenment.

The justification of common law is its origin in a time out of mind for "time out of mind" releases jurists from the Godlike role by means of precedent. International law's foundations are shakier, for *jus sovereignis* is the will of dead white males.

International law predated the idea that rights flow not from the sovereign but from people and therefore is an intellectual and moral anomaly. Anomalies like American slavery tend to produce disasters, and the anomaly of *jus sovereignis* produced the Balkan disaster, as old-school diplomats seemed compelled to stand idly by.

Diplomacy and international law seem to the layperson to be a pleasant affair involving bun-fights, at the better sort of spa. The problem is the Monty-Pythonesque intrusion of reality, as seen by British and Argentine diplomats in 1982, by international economists in Seattle, and in the Balkan mess. No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition, Srebenica, or the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacreexcept the truly first-rate, like Richard Holbrooke here in the USA or Geoffrey Robertson in Britain.

The dyslexic may object that I have been hornswoggled by Holbrooke's and Robertson's purple prose. The problem is that both write well, in this book and in Richard Holbrooke's recount of the long road to the Dayton peace conference of 1995. The problem is that writing well is constituted in a conformance to both moral vision and facts on the ground.

The modern international law movement reacts to the recurrence of absolute evil in Europe and Africa in the 1990s, this time unjustified by Communist or free market ideology, and unexplained by Fascist pseudo-ideology.

Absolute evil is to the moral imagination the converse of the needs of one's own children to Bertrand Russell. Despite his skeptical precommittments, Lord Russell said that the needs of kids are something that "skepticism does not easily question". Skepticism did not easily process the return, in August 1992, of concentration camps in the former Yugoslavia, and Robertson's response is the deconstruction of absolute national sovereignity. Skepticism dare not question the redress of crime.

One objection, mentioned by Robertson, is that international law, other than a purely naturalistic law based on jus sovereignis, is cultural imperialism.

Cultural imperialism has indeed misapplied norms. But you cannot apply cultural relativism in an absolute way: this is mere self-contradiction.

There is also the objection against a natural law as inconsistent with an open society.

The problem is that unthinking adherence to a natural law in an open society results in a confused expansion of natural law when we tolerantly seek to reconcile views, as to what the practical implications of natural law might actually be.

This resulted in America's "Black Hawk Down" disaster in Mogadishu in which idealism combined with our Pentagon's vainglorious refusal to serve in a unified command to send underpowered Rangers into Mogadishu, and the Rangers were rescued by Pakistanis with the sense to serve as part of the rest of the UN.

The natural law was you don't let people starve, even when they are far away, and, if bullies are taking the aid you have sent, you send soldiers. Clinton failed to enforce this because the Pentagon vaingloriously refuses to serve under UN command.

The failures of international law in the early 1990s produced, not abstract theories, but hard work like that of QC Robertson, the benefit of which skepticism does not easily question.

This included the arrest of General Pinochet.

The flaccid skepticism of America's media about Pinochet's guilt does not easily question Robertson's factual recitation of what happened, in the 1970s, to people in Chile.

In recent years USA circles have been oppressed with a skeptical cynicism which proclaims the impossibility of securing the good because, don't you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

This makes it possible for pro-Pinochet American conservatives to easily question the veracity of torture reports, or, failing this, the innocence of the disappeared, or, failing this, the "realism" of letting philosophy majors scuttle around Santiago, or, failing this, the free-market ideological bona fides of the messenger. This epistemological curse, of a doubt which is really a bias and a form of intellectual schlamperei, going along to get along with the free market god, is pervasive in American culture.

In Rome we reasoned against the fact that people die when modern states collapse that some future Rusty Calley jest might get nailed. We like to talk about "do-gooders" and their ineffectuality when our own ineffectuality was on display in Vietnam and Mogadishu.

What we fail to see is the Kantianism that abstract ideals DO NOT EXIST without acts: but pure acts show a bad will because they are uninformed by a consistent ideal, but were, in Mogadishu, the product of a monstrous "will" that made the Pentagon an equal partner with the Chief Executive.

Note the laziness, note the sloppiness, note the flaccidity.

For we apply Constitutional "separation of powers" to the Pentagon which as part of the executive doesn't get power independent of the commander in chief.

QC Robertson's vigorous prose is clearly evidence of a first-class mind sorely absent in American councils of state. If this is at all indicative of the abilities of people at The Hague, I for one am an American who would welcome those fabled black helicopters.

He puts me in mind of the astonishing statement at the beginning of Kant's Metaphysic of Morals, for Kant says the only thing we can know to be good is a good will.

On the face of it, this seems to be one of those marvelous-but-false-at-the-critical-point German ideas, like zoos, Zeppelins or the Schlieffen plan: for as we know the road to hell or Srebenica is paved with good intentions. But upon closer examination, will wills itself into pragmatic daily action, and the road to hell is seen to be paved with action and inaction and not good will.

Its a solid read with many interesting cases and examples. I bought this book to compete in a high school debate, it was though thoroughly enjoyable for me to read. I gave it a 4 rating because although it was interesting and thought provoking it seem, at many time, as if I was reading a history lesson.

If you need to brush up on your crimes and international law this is the book for you.