Hoffmann: Between Politics and Justice: International Criminal Law in Hungary

Tamás Hoffmann (Corvinus Univ. of Budapest) has posted Between Politics and Justice: International Criminal Law in Hungary (International Criminal Law Review, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article gives an overview of the application of international criminal law norms in the Hungarian legal system in the post-World War II. era. It introduces history's first domestic criminal trial against a former head of state for the crime of aggression in front of the Hungarian People's Tribunals; the origins of the widespread adoption of universal jurisdiction by socialist countries; how international law was used to prosecute crimes against humanity committed in the communist era and later instrumentalized to serve as an anti-communist tool; and how and why the first ever trial based on universal jurisdiction in Eastern Europe was conducted in Budapest.