Agenda for Reform

Abstract

International citizens’ tribunals could be especially relevant and constructive in conjunction with the growing world trends toward the rule of law and participatory democracy. However, the efficacy of such tribunals has been decreasing. The Reichstag fire Commission of Inquiry helped save four innocent defendants. The Dewey Commission contributed to the public exoneration of Trotsky, helped undermine the credibility of the Moscow trials, and highlighted the importance of liberal insistence on due process and judicial objectivity. It could not, however, prevent additional show trials based on falsified charges. The Russell Tribunal presented important evidence of American war crimes, energized the West European and Japanese antiwar movements, but was unsuccessful in galvanizing a war resisters’ movement in the United States or in encouraging a military withdrawal from Vietnam. Over the last thirty years of the twentieth century, tribunals came to address many crucial issues, but they did not mobilized public opinion effectively or alter significantly the legal course of justice. Reform of the ways in which tribunals are organized and operated is therefore imperative.