An Empirical Study of ICTY and ICTR Sentencing: Doctrine Versus Practice

70 Pages Posted: 8 Aug 2009

See all articles by Joseph W. Doherty

Joseph W. Doherty

University of California, Los Angeles - School of Law

Richard H. Steinberg

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law

Date Written: August 3, 2009

Abstract

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) were tasked as vehicles for deterrence against future atrocities, retribution against perpetrators, restoration of peace and reconciliation, substituting and reflecting local customs, establishing a historical record of the events, building international law and jurisprudence on the topic, expressing humanity’s stake in redressing horrendous crimes, and justice. The Tribunals expressly adopted all of the objectives identified above and began building their sentencing doctrine around those objectives. This paper asks what factors in fact explain the length of sentences handed down by the ICTY and ICTR. Do the factors that the Tribunals claim to be considering in sentencing in fact affect sentence length? Do the sentencing factors rejected by the Tribunals as inappropriate in fact bear upon sentence length? Do factors not discussed at all by the Tribunals affect sentences? We find that several factors that the Tribunals claim matter bear no significant relationship to sentence length, and that one factor that is supposed to be inapposite is in fact related significantly to sentence length. These findings raise important questions, which we also address: Why aren’t these international courts doing what they say they are doing? And to what extent might the Tribunals’ de facto sentencing practices advance or undermine their various (and sometimes conflicting) objectives?

Keywords: International Criminal Tribunal, ICTY, ICTR, International Organization, International Criminal Law, Sentencing

undefined

Suggested Citation

Doherty, Joseph W. and Steinberg, Richard H., An Empirical Study of ICTY and ICTR Sentencing: Doctrine Versus Practice (August 3, 2009). CELS 2009 4th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1443468 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1443468

Joseph W. Doherty (Contact Author)

University of California, Los Angeles - School of Law ( email )

385 Charles E. Young Dr. East
Room 1242
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1476
United States

Richard H. Steinberg

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law ( email )

385 Charles E. Young Dr. East
Room 1242
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1476
United States
310-267-2064 (Phone)
310-206-7010 (Fax)

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
221
Abstract Views
854
Rank
183,957