Nouwen & Becker: Tadić v. Prosecutor: International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 1995

Sarah Nouwen (Univ. of Cambridge - Law) & Michael A Becker (Univ. of Cambridge - Law) have posted Tadić v. Prosecutor: International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 1995 (in Landmark Cases in Public International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Forthcoming in Landmark Cases in Public International Law (Hart, 2017), this chapter investigates the ‘landmark’ status of the decision of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in Tadić v Prosecutor (1995). The chapter differentiates between two types of landmarks: signposts for other travelers, indicating the direction to be followed, or high-water points, relics of a particular moment in time. This chapter considers the significance of the Tadić case in both senses of landmark. After reflecting upon the case as a matter of diplomatic and legal history, it analyses the interlocutory appeal decided by the Appeals Chamber on 2 October 1995 as a landmark with respect to three areas of international law: general international law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. It ends with a perspective on the significance of the interlocutory appeal for legal reasoning in international law. It concludes that in some areas the Tadić Interlocutory Appeal has been a signpost (for instance, its validation of the power of the Security Council to pursue the project of international criminal law and developments in international humanitarian law, particularly the diminishing relevance of the distinction between international and non-international armed conflict), while in others more a high-water mark (for example, as a case study in judicial law-making and legal reasoning that invokes natural law or appeals to morality to overcome perceived shortcomings in the positive law).