[Download] "Beyond Moral Minimalism (Response TO CRIMES AGAINST Humanity) (Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account)" by Ethics & International Affairs # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Beyond Moral Minimalism (Response TO CRIMES AGAINST Humanity) (Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account)
- Author : Ethics & International Affairs
- Release Date : January 01, 2006
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 272 KB
Description
Larry May's Crimes Against Humanity tackles the most basic questions about international criminal law (ICL). (1) As one of the very first efforts to think through the intricate philosophical questions raised by international trials for mass atrocities and other state crimes, May's theory is tremendously important. I am in agreement with a great deal of May's book; nevertheless, I find myself with a few significant reservations. I will focus my comments on four specific areas: the scope of ICL, the significance of state sovereignty, the requirement of fairness to defendants, and the group character of international crimes. My first reservation centers on May's view of the scope of international criminal law. He is "conservative ... on what counts as an international crime" (p. 93). He believes that important normative principles dictate that the realm of ICL should be narrow, encompassing only a handful of crimes and offenders, principally national leaders. At the moment, ICL satisfies May's strictures. Recent international tribunals focus on three crimes: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. (2) Many international lawyers with cosmopolitan aspirations, however, believe that over time the list should expand. They hope that in the future ICL will penalize terrorism, massive infliction of environmental damage, willful destruction of cultural treasures, acute forms of female subordination, persecution of gays, trafficking in persons, gross abuses of economic power tolerated by the state--such as debt bondage and similar forms of de facto enslavement--and international arms trafficking to trouble spots. They also hope that international criminal law will apply in the future to corporations and even to states. Although May insists that he is not opposed to expanding the list of international crimes (p. 95), his "moral minimalist" principles leave very little scope for doing so. They rule out criminalizing conduct unless it assaults basic security and subsistence rights and unless groups perpetrate it or suffer from it.