ANOTHER PROBLEM FOR THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT: LEGAL AFFAIRS IS REPORTING that the Rwandan court, sometimes cited as a prototype, is working out badly:

The discovery of genocide suspects on the ICTR’s payroll has threatened the integrity of the experiment in international law taking place in Arusha. Along with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, the tribunal for Rwanda is the first international court to try war criminals since the famous ones in Nuremberg and Tokyo following World War II. The U.N. Security Council set up the courts in 1993 and 1994 respectively to prosecute leaders suspected of committing genocide and crimes against humanity, and to alleviate Western guilt about having let them rage unchecked. The tribunals are the forerunners of the newly established and permanent International Criminal Court, which will be based in The Hague.

The Bush Administration strongly opposes the ICC—which was formally created in July—citing the potential threat to the authority of the U.S. courts and to Americans whom, theoretically, the court could prosecute. (See “Go Dutch.”) But the revelations about Nshamihigo and Nzabirinda expose a more practical and perhaps more debilitating problem for international tribunals—porous security and inept bureaucracy. The arrests have undermined the ICTR’s relationship with the current Tutsi-led government of Rwanda, which was already fragile, and have shaken the faith of some in the international diplomatic community, which was already weak. As a European diplomat based in Rwanda put it recently, “Imagine Klaus Barbie working for the defense at Nuremberg.”

You only get an excerpt (though it’s much longer than this passage) on their website, but I was just reading the actual magazine and this story is worth your attention if you’re interested in this subject.

The article by my law school classmate Nicki Kuckes on law firms and billable hours is good too, but unfortunately not on the web.