AN OVERVIEW OF THREE INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE INSTITUTIONS

International criminal tribunals share many attributes of their antecedents, domestic courts. Trials at the ICTR and ICTY, like their common law counterparts, are propelled by the adversarial process wherein the prosecution musters its best case against the accused on the basis of the available evidence, and defense counsel contests the prosecution's claims wherever possible. Although many conventional, domestic courtroom procedures can also be identified in international tribunals, the latter institutions possess a variety of unique structural and procedural attributes as well. Institutions such as the ICC, ICTR, and ICTY are sited outside the institutional framework of the nation-state, and they are not subjected to the usual supervision and regulation of a state justice ministry. Even though they are heavily dependent on nation-states for their daily operations, each international court proudly declares its independence from national legal traditions, with the ICTY, for instance, claiming that it constitutes “a sui generis institution with its own rules of procedure[,] which do not merely constitute a transposition of legal systems.” The ICTY's rules of procedure and evidence are not entirely drawn from either the Anglo-American system or the Continental civil law system, and tribunal statements appropriately define the ICTY and ICTR as a “hybrid system.” The combination of international courts' distinctive institutional position and their singular rules and procedures means that stock critiques of domestic courts are not directly applicable and may require rethinking.