"Amnesty and Justice in International Law": A presentation by Max Pensky
Max Pensky (Philosophy, Binghamton University) has published widely in political theory and continental philosophy and in contemporary European politics and society. His most recent book, on Jurgen Habermas, is The Ends of Solidarity: Discourse Theory in Ethics and Politics (State University of New York, 2008) and he has also recently published Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations After the Iraq War (co-edited with Daniel Levy and John Torpey, Verso 2005). This talk was organized by the Dialectics & Society group.
Question and Answer Session
International criminal justice is a growing force in the dynamic of globalization, promoting a border-crossing regime of accountability for international crimes and challenging the traditional primacy of domestic criminal law systems. At the same time, nations dealing with a difficult transition to democracy often see the offer of amnesties for perpetrators of international crimes as an important, perhaps even a vital tool in the struggle to secure peace, stability, and democratic change. Ought such amnesties have any validity in international law? Does the push to end the use of such amnesties by international courts spell trouble for the prospects of a cosmopolitan law regime?