Just When You Thought It Was Safe: Ken Starr Goes Global

Jonathan Rauch | October 7, 2000

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Unfortunately, many human rights activists hate this new concept. "We're afraid that this is a precedent that will come back to haunt the U.N. elsewhere," Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times in May. The United Nations, he added, has conducted trials with "scrupulous regard for due process." Cambodian judges, he implied, will not.

Such advocates mean well, but the Kiplingesque condescension implicit in their positions -- a kind of legal colonialism -- becomes evident from the Times headline announcing the Cambodian deal: "U.N. Allows Cambodians to Take Part in Trial of Khmer Rouge." Moreover, much though Westerners hate to say so, American-style judicial meticulousness is a luxury that not all poor or unstable countries in recovery from genocide or mass butchery can afford. The agonizingly slow International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has managed to complete only eight or so trials since 1995. Some of the sentences -- for genocide, mind you -- have been as low as 12 years. The Rwandan government, whose own brand of justice is rougher but swifter, is understandably dismayed.

The ICC may be inevitable, and it is certainly well intentioned, and it may work out fine in the end. But it nonetheless smacks of moral grandstanding, and it deserves more critical scrutiny than it has received. The Clinton Administration has been content to challenge the ICC on parochial grounds while accepting its broad premises, which is a pity. Americans, of all people, are well equipped to point out that independent prosecutors often become obsessed with their causes, take forever to accomplish not much, and pour gasoline on political fires. And Bill Clinton, of all people, is well equipped to make the case against globalizing Kenneth Starr.