For the past few decades, there has been growth in international criminal justice, in part because of changes to the structure of the international justice system and also because of greater concern for human rights violations and war crimes within States’ borders. In 1998, a statute was passed that led to the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court. After a relatively brief period of time of prioritizing the prosecution of war crimes and legally responding to genocide, international justice seems to be fatiguing, with concerns about the effectiveness, costs, and amount of time taken by the investigations and trials. Are these concerns valid, and what are some of the possible responses?

Ken Scott has spent his career fighting large-scale injustices from white-collar crime to human rights violations and war crimes. In his last trial at the Yugoslavia Tribunal, he convicted a prime minister, defense minister, two army chiefs of staff, the head of the military police and another senior government official for war crimes involving ethnic cleansing. After serving for 12 years as a federal prosecutor in Denver, focusing largely on white-collar and environmental crimes, Ken and his family moved to The Hague, where he was a senior prosecutor the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for 14 years. Since returning to Denver, he has engaged in wide-ranging human rights and war crimes practice, was appointed a UN Commissioner on Human Rights in South Sudan and continues to act as a special prosecutor at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, also in The Hague. He consults on various projects and engages in training throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.