Principle of Retribution for International Crimes Essay

Principle of Retribution for International Crimes - Essay Exampleh. Without a coherent philosophical opening of criminal punishment to justify international criminal justice, the mere place or permission to apply a set of norms to international criminals remains vacuous. If such trials evokenot provide satisfying justice in a philosophically meaningful sense, they are more deeply flawed than whatever procedural objection would reveal. (John, 2001)The idea that all criminals should be punished for their illicit deeds, regardless of their political position, is at the heart of the modern international criminal law regime. The former argues that the benefits, over either the short or long run, of punishing people such as Goring or Saddam Hussein in a legal forum justify such trials. Such thinkers point to the usual battery of functional arguments for punishment deterring future crimes, establishing a historical record of the criminal acts, reforming lawbreakers, providing a sense of closure to their victims, and so forth The other, more abstract view declares that justice itself demands that these people be punished independent of all harmful or beneficial consequences that may arise from their trial. For retributivists, other benefits of punishment, though desirable in themselves, are morally insignificant. It is the latter view that is the only valid justification for trying the unique sorts of crimes that the international courts subscribe to been designed to handle. (Larry, 2005)Arnaud does not argue for the philosophical soundness of retributivism as such, nor he defendes the philosophical legitimacy of war-crimes trials in general. Specifically, he stated that one cannot make sense out of the intuitions, values, and beliefs that stand tail the current effort toward international criminal trials and war-crimes trials (or their shared ideology, if you will (Arnaud 2004, 1) unless one understands it to be rooted in a retributivist theory of punishmen t. While the term ideology is a loaded one, it nonetheless captures the point the ideology standing behind modern international criminal law and the laws of war displays a noted bias in choose of the retributivist principles articulated by Kant (among others). Ultimately, war-crimes trials do not provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number. (Christopher 2002, 43-61)Despite most important philosophical differences among individual thinkers, retributivists share some common central beliefs. For these thinkers, the rationale for punishment is metaphysical in character in the sense that it is rooted in abstract principles of justice and right. Justice is the independent, immaterial motivation for punishment, and it serves as the sole determining ground for punishment. Punishment by a court (poena forensis) ... can never be inflicted merely as a