Law, War and Crime by Gerry Simpson
| Date | 01 May 2008 |
| Published date | 01 May 2008 |
| Author | Sandesh Sivakumaran |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2008.00703.x |
REVIEWS
Gerry Simpson, Law, War and Crime,Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007, 225 pp,
hb d50.
Law,Warand Crime is a book that could be produced only bysomeone fully versed
in their ¢eld. Readers familiar with Simpson’s work, for example his ‘Critical
Introduction’to the co-editedWa r C r i m e s work (McCormack and Simpson (eds),
The Law of War Crimes: Na tional and International Approaches, Kluwer, 1997), may
recognise some of the ideas taken up in Law,War and Crime, ideas deserving of a
book length treatment with the bene¢ts of space that it allows.
Simpson’s general thesis is that:
the ¢eld of war crimes is constituted bya s et of relations hips ^ betweenpolitics and
law; between local justice and cosmopolitan reckoning; between collective guilt
and individual responsibility; between making history and performing justice;
between legitimising dominant political forces and permitting the expression of
dissident views; between the idea of impartialand honourable justice, and the spec-
tre of the war crimes trial as a show trial; between the i nstinct that war, at worst, is
an error, and the conviction that war is a crime; and between projects dedicated to
the el imination of ‘e nemies of man kind’ through political action and regimes
intended to provide for the prosecution and trial of adversaries (1).
Accordingly, the book is divided into eight chapters entitled, rather neatly, ‘Law’s
Politics:War Crimes Trials and Political Trials’;‘Law’s Place: Internationalism and
Localism’;‘Law’s Subjects: Individual Responsibility a nd Collective Guilt’; ‘Law’s
Promise: Punishment, Memory and Dissent’; ‘Law’s Anxieties: ShowTrials’;‘Law’s
Hegemony:The Juridi¢cationof War’ ; ‘Law’s Origins: Pirates’; and ‘Law’s Fate’.
There is much of interest in each chapter. Of particular note is the chapter on
‘Law’s Place’, place being identi¢ed with physical space (the movement between
trials at the domestic level and the international level) as well as style (theprovin-
cial and the cosmopolitan). The chapter on ‘Law’s Subjects’ tackles the issue of
individual crimes versus state crimes and individual responsibility versus collec-
tive guilt. This a¡ords a classic example of Simpson settingout what maybe con-
sidered the orthodox view of things (59^61) before systematically taking it apart
(61^66). In‘Law’s Promise’, Simpson explores the justi¢cationsof war crimes trials
in terms of their provision of a historical record and their use as an educational
tool. He reveals the tension between these purposes and other functions war
crimes trials serve. The sections on legitimation ^ the idea that trials are as much
about the guiltof the perpetrators as they are the innocence of those prosecuting
them ^ and‘discordant notes’ or dissident narratives ^ the notion of a dissenting
voice on o⁄cial views (think Justice Pal on the judgment of the International
r2008 The Authors.Journal Compilation r20 08The Modern Law Review Limited.
Published by BlackwellPublishing, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
(2008) 71(3) 490^504
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