Политика и право у раду Хашког трибунала
Politics and Law in the Work of the Hague Tribunal

Summary/Abstract: The history of the entire international criminal justice abounds in a specific mixture of law and politics, and The Hague Tribunal is no exception in this respect. All the typical political obstacles to the development and establishment of an institution of international criminal justice are also present here, and are even more prominent. The very establishment of this judicial body as a subsidiary body of the Security Council for the clearly political purpose of assisting in establishing and maintaining peace, all of the above deriving from Chapter VII of the UN Charter, is indicative enough. The foundations of procedural and substantive law necessary for the work of a body that purports to be referred to as a court were not completely and fully laid down (the Tribunal is “subnormed”), and as a consequence of this, both judicial and legislative powers were conferred upon the judges. Since the legal framework in which the Tribunal has existed lacks sufficient legal norms, it is no surprise that instead of clear, specific and written legal rules, some unclear, indefinite, amorphous, fluid and unwritten political customs and practices have taken over. The absence of clear supervision, either by the legislator, or a higher legal instance, has led to the court proceedings being slow and ineffective, and to the bearers of key functions being irresponsible, arrogant and impudent. All in all, the void that has been created by the legal, but also extralegal establishment of the Hague Tribunal has made it possible for extrajudicial measures and patterns to become its common practice, and has also been completely exploited by politics. The key disastrous consequence of this fact is the inability of the Tribunal to develop from a mere “disciplinary commission” of the Security Council into a genuine, serious and responsible legal institution. It has never managed to transform itself into a court, and to the end of its mandate it will remain just an ordinary “Tribunal”.

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