History teaches that there is something novel in pursuing justice – instead of vengeance – in the aftermath of atrocity. This is a new endeavor. It is bold, fresh, exciting, at times anxious, and certainly lacking in experience. International criminal lawyers have stepped into this experiential void.

One way for the architects of international criminal process, most of whom are Western or Western-trained, to assuage anxiety is to turn to that which is familiar to them: namely, domestic criminal and human rights frameworks in liberal states. Even though experiences with these frameworks are not easily transferable to mass atrocity, it is somehow easier to replay preexisting doctrinal frameworks rather than develop new ones. The fact that atrocity prosecutions are reactive to cataclysmic events – sometimes expediently so – makes them even more prone to claim a quick-fix identity.

It thus becomes understandable why the structure, rules, and methodologies of the process and punishment of extraordinary international criminality largely constitute a transplant of the structure, rules, and methodologies of ordinary criminal process and punishment in those states that dominate the international order. Assuredly, the transplant is not a perfectly repotted plant. Certain adaptations have taken place along the way. Some of these, for example regarding the laws of evidence, arose in part in response to the difficulties in convicting individuals for group crimes. Yet, as I explore in this chapter, these adaptations are narrow, programmatic, and at times embarrassing to the institutions that promulgate them.