Hybrid Tribunals: A Comparative Examination

Hybrid tribunals are a form of the international justice where the judicial responsibility is shared between the United Nations and the local state where they function. These tribunals represent an important bridge between courts like the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and various local legal justice systems. Because hybrid tribunals are developed in response to large-scale atrocities (or in the case of Lebanon a single murder), these courts are properly considered part of the international criminal justice system. This feature gives hybrid tribunals the accountability and legitimacy often lost in local justice systems; however, by including regional courtroom procedures and personnel, they are integrated into the local justice system in a way that allows (in appearance, at least) a society to deal with its criminals on its own terms.

This book will examine hybrid tribunals in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Cambodia, East Timor, and Lebanon in their entirety, in terms of their origins (the political and social forces that led to their creation), the legal regimes that they used, their various institutional structures, and the challenges that they faced. Through this examination, the author will examine both their successes and their shortcomings, and present recommendations for the formation of future hybrid tribunals. This unique volume combines historical and legal analyses of these hybrid tribunals, placing them within a larger context and providing recommendations for the formation of future hybrid tribunals.