The Ceaseless Search for Justice

Justice after atrocities is elusive. Despite a growing international consensus that torturers and the architects of genocide should stand trial for their crimes, prosecution is rare. For every Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor—two of the more deserving defendants in modern history—there are a thousand Pol Pots and Idi Amins who escape justice. Today in Khartoum, Sudan’s leaders walk freely while Darfur’s surviving victims of crimes against humanity huddle in Chadian refugee camps, fearful of renewed janjaweed attacks.

The creation of the International Criminal Court in 1998 promised an end to the impunity too many mass murderers enjoy. Erna Paris’s highly accessible The Sun Climbs Slow: Justice in the Age of Imperial America joins a growing literature surrounding the development of international criminal law and the maddening quest...