New Book: Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials (Updated)

I am delighted to announce the publication of a new book that I co-edited with my colleague and dear friend Gerry Simpson, The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials. As the title indicates, the book contains a number of essays that discuss little-known trials (such as the Franco-Siamese Mixed Court)  or re-narrate better known but misunderstood trials (such as the trial of Peter von Hagenbach). Here is the table of contents:

1: Gerry Simpson: Introduction

Part 1: Pre-Histories: From Von Hagenbach to The Armenian Genocide
2: Gregory S. Gordon: The trial of Peter von Hagenbach: Reconciling history, historiography, and international criminal law
3: Benjamin Brockman-Hawe: A supranational criminal tribunal for the colonial era: the Franco-Siamese Mixed Court
4: Jennifer Balint: The Ottoman state special military tribunal for the Genocide of the Armenians: ‘Doing government business’

Part 2: European Histories I: Prosecuting Atrocity
5: Rosa Ana Alija-Fernández: Justice for no-land’s men? United States military trials against Spanish Kapos in Mauthausen and universal jurisdiction
6: Dov Jacobs: A narrative of justice and the (re)writing of history: French trials after World War II
7: Frédéric Mégret: The Bordeaux Trial: Prosecuting the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre

Part 3: European Histories II: Americans in Europe
8: Grietje Baars: Capitalism’s victor’s justice? Prosecution of industrialists post WWII
9: Stephen Vladeck: Eisentrager’s (Forgotten) Merits: Military commissions and collateral review

Part 4: European Histories III: Contemporary Trials
10: Benedetta Faedi Duramy: Making peace with the past: Federal Republic of Germany’s accountability for World War II massacres before the Italian Supreme Court
11: Tamás Hoffman: Trying communism through international criminal law? The experiences of the Hungarian historical justice trials
12: Rain Liivoja: Competing histories: Soviet war crimes in the Baltic States
13: Julia Selman-Ayetey: Universal jurisdiction: Conflict and contoversy in Norway

Part 5: African Histories
14: Jackson Maogoto: Reading the shadows of history: The bridges between Turkish and Ethiopian ‘internationalised’ domestic crime trials
15: Firew Kebede Tiba: Mass trials and modes of responsibility for international crimes: Ethiopia

Part 6: Southern Histories
16: Georgina Fitzpatrick: War crimes trials, victor’s justice, and Australian military justice in the aftermath of the second world war
17: Narrelle Morris: Justice for ‘Asian’ victims: Australian war crimes trials of the Japanese 1945-51
18: Peter Rush: Dirty War crimes: Jurisdictions of memory and international criminal law

Part 7: Histories of a Type: Excavating the Crime of Aggression
21: Roger Clark: The crime of aggression: From the trial of Takashi Sakai in August 1946 to the Kampala Review Conference in 2010
22: Mark Drumbl: ‘Germans are the lords and Poles are the servants’: The trial of Arthur Greiser in Poland, 1946
23: Immi Tallgren: The Finnish war-responsibility trial in 1945-56: Flawed justice, anxious peace?

You can purchase a hard copy of the book at the OUP website here. You can also — as part of an experimental OUP initiative — download a complete PDF of the book for free at either www.oup.com/uk or www.oapen.org. If you cannot afford the £70.00, by all means download the PDF.

UPDATE: The free open-access version of the book is now available on the webpage linked to above.