Book Review

Abstract

International criminal tribunals (ICTs) can, and are often expected to, perform a multitude of potentially contradictory functions. One of the more simultaneously celebrated and derided functions is that of writing the histories of the conflicts they adjudicate. As Zammit Borda aptly illustrates in his perceptive and refreshingly pragmatic new book, the possibility of ICTs to write authoritative and universally accepted histories of armed conflict and atrocity was one of the main justifications given by prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunal for the very establishment of the first ICT. Since then, many legal scholars and practitioners have questioned the wisdom and practicality of an ICT attempting to write an accurate history of a complex conflict. In Histories Written by International Criminal Courts and Tribunals: Developing a Responsible History Framework, Zammit Borda positions himself in between these two extremes and argues for a need to recognize that ICTs do, in fact, write histories as part of their judgments and that they must do so responsibly while acknowledging the limitations of their ability to write academically rigorous histories. Zammit Borda begins this volume with an analysis of this theoretical debate on whether ICTs should write historical narratives (Ch 2). He divides the theories into three broad camps: the restrictive camp arguing that ICTs should stick to adjudicating criminal liability,1 the expansive camp arguing that ICTs should focus on writing history potentially at the expense of other goals,2 and a moderate camp arguing that truth and justice must inevitably be rendered together in a responsible manner.3 In first setting out a strict dichotomy between restrictive and expansive approaches, Zammit Borda risks creating strawmen out of complex theories. However, he acknowledges this risk, and his actual analysis of the theories is nuanced and sees pros and cons in both camps. Although Zammit Borda does not lay out his own theory until Chapter 7, it quickly becomes clear in this theoretical discussion that he finds the moderate camp the most persuasive. An important and eminently rational aspect of this moderate view that Zammit Borda adopts is that ICTs must understand and acknowledge their limitations in telling full historical narratives. In Chapters 3 through 6, he analyses what he sees as the most relevant and understudied of these limitations. He begins with a novel and intriguing analysis of how the structure and process of