The MagazineSummary JusticeA courtroom isn’t the best place to put history on trial.Mar 8, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 24
• By CHARLOTTE ALLEN
 A History of Political Trials From Charles I
This is a detailed and depressing account of the consequences of using the criminal justice system to punish outrages, usually genuine but sometimes fabricated, that are, for a variety of reasons, outside the bounds of what we think of as criminal law. As the subtitle indicates, it is not an exhaustive historical survey of political trials. It does not cover such travesties as Stalin’s show trials of the 1930s or the routine imprisonment of dissenters by the Castro regime. Rather, it examines a specific subset: the trials of former heads of state and their top officials by the victors who unseated them in wars or political coups. The post-World War II Nuremberg trials that resulted in war-crimes convictions of highly placed Nazi operatives fall into this category, as do the numerous Soviet-instigated judicial purges of non-Communists in Eastern Europe during the early Cold War years, the trials of Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu and East Germany’s Erich Honecker at the end of the Cold War, and most recently the 1998 genocide conviction of the former Rwandan president Jean Kambanda, the genocide trial of the former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Miloševic, and, finally, the 2006 trial of Saddam Hussein. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
the rest of this article is available only to subscribers. You have two options: 1:
2:
If you are not yet a Subscriber to TWS, don't wait
any longer to Subscribe Now!
Subscribing today will provide you with immediate, complete access to the current issue, as well as to all back issues on the site. Each week you will be able to read articles from the newest issue even before print copies are mailed! Privacy PolicyThe Weekly Standard ArchivesBrowse 15 Years of the Weekly Standard |
What Did You Miss? 
Features |
Become a Fan on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Share This
© Copyright 2012 The Weekly Standard LLC - A Weekly Conservative Magazine & Blog. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy
