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³ Lesaffer, Randall, ‘International Law and Its History: The Story of an Unrequited Love’ in Craven, Matthew, Fitzmaurice, Malgosia and Vogiatzi, Maria (eds), Time, History and International Law (Martinus Nijhoff 2007) 27, 34–38Google Scholar.

⁴ ibid.

⁵ Maitland, Frederic, Why the History of English Law Is Not Written (Clay & Sons 1888) 14Google Scholar.

⁶ ibid.

⁷ ibid.

⁸ ‘Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on Enforcement of Penalties’ (1920) 14 American Journal of International Law 95 (Commission Report).

⁹ But see Randall Lesaffer, ‘Law Between Past and Present’ in Bart van Klink and Sanne Taekema (eds), Law and Method (Mohr Siebeck 2011) 133, 143 (‘There is no sound basis to hold that a truly historical approach to law makes legal history less relevant to the understanding of current law than the more “juridical” one’).

¹⁰ Committee of Enquiry into Breaches of the Laws of War, ‘First, Second, and Third Interim Reports from the Committee of Enquiry into the Breaches of the Laws of War, with Appendices’, 26 February 1920, TNA CAB 24/111/13 (British Committee Memorandum).

¹¹ Ministère de la Guerre (Albert Geouffre de Lapradelle and Fernand Larnaude), Examen de la Responsabilité Pénale de L'Empereur Guillaume II (Imprimerie Nationale 1918).

¹² Schabas (n 1) 67.

¹³ ibid 110.

¹⁴ ibid 116–18.

¹⁵ Commission Report (n 8).

¹⁶ Versailles Treaty (n 2).

¹⁷ Robert Lansing, Some Legal Questions of the Peace Conference (US Government Printing Office 1919) 18; Schabas (n 1) 195.

¹⁸ Allan Sherman, Peter and the Commissar (RCA Red Seal Record 1964), https://youtu.be/w9tnOWAillk (minute 3:18–3:23 of the recording: ‘… we have all heard the saying, which is true as well as witty that a camel is a horse designed by a committee’). Note that while the phrase is commonly attributed to Sherman, this recording implies that it is older.

¹⁹ The council, consisting of the American, British, French and Italian heads of state, was unofficially referred to as the Conseil des Vièrges (the Council of Virgins). As Schabas explains: ‘The inspiration [for that name] was a popular French novel, entitled Les demi-vièrges, by Marcel Prévost, published in 1894. It was premised on the preposterous idea that Heads of State had virgin minds’: Schabas (n 1) 175.

²⁰ ‘From Robert Lansing (Paris, 8 April 1919)’, reproduced in Arthur S Link (ed), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Vol 57, Princeton University Press 1987) 131.

²¹ cf Schabas (n 1) 195 (‘Lansing put a brave face on what may have seemed a great personal humiliation’), with James Willis, Prologue to Nuremberg (Greenwood 1982) 81 (‘Lansing, through his recommendations to Wilson, managed in the end to triumph’).

²² ‘Appendix: War Crimes Clauses of Peace Treaties of the First World War’ in Willis (n 21) 177–81.

²³ See Office of the US Representative to the UN War Crime Commission, ‘Trial of War Criminals by Mixed Inter-Allied Military Tribunals’, 31 August 1944, 3–4, http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/e5f070/ (1944 Memorandum).

²⁴ Schabas (n 1) 1.

²⁵ See ibid 2, 315.

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²⁷ McKay, David and Lauterpacht, Hersch, Oppenheim on International Law (Vol 2, David McKay Company 1955) 609Google Scholar (‘[Even] [b]efore a Law of Nations in the modern sense of the term was in existence, a pirate was already considered an outlaw, a hostis humani generis … Piracy is a[n] … international crime … [because] the pirate … can be brought to justice anywhere’).

²⁸ eg, Henderson, Conway, Understanding International Law (John Wiley & Sons 2010) 43, 143, 248–50Google Scholar. See also Dubber, Markus and Hörnle, Tatjana, Criminal Law: A Comparative Approach (Oxford University Press 2014) 153Google Scholar (stating that the application of universal jurisdiction to offences such as core international crimes constitutes ‘turning the power of criminal punishment against the hostis humani generis, the enemy of mankind, the universal outlaw, expressions historically associated with the pirate’).

²⁹ eg, Richard DiMeglio and others, Law of Armed Conflict Deskbook (US Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center 2012) 13–14; Roberts, Adam, ‘Land Warfare: From Hague to Nuremberg’ in Howard, Michael, Andreopoulos, George J and Shulmam, Mark R (eds), The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (Yale University Press 1994) 116, 116–20Google Scholar.

³⁰ eg, Doty, Grant, ‘The United States and the Development of the Laws of Land Warfare’ (1998) 156 Military Law Review 224, 224Google Scholar (‘the period from 1856 to 1909 [was] the law of war's “epoch of highest repute.” The defining aspect of this epoch was the establishment, by states, of a positive legal or legislative foundation superseding a regime based primarily on religion, chivalry, and customs’); Solis, Gary, The Law of Armed Conflict: International Humanitarian Law in War (Cambridge University Press 2010) 54CrossRefGoogle Scholar (stating that the adoption of the penalty clause in Article 3 of 1907 Hague Convention was, arguably, ‘the first time … that rules of war became laws of war’).

³¹ eg, Pendas, Devin O, ‘Orientation War Crimes Trials in Theory and Practice from Middle Ages to the Present’ in Waterlow, Jonathan and Schuhmacher, Jacques (eds), War Crimes Trials and Investigations (Palgrave 2018) 23, 28–29Google Scholar.

³² ibid 31; Bassiouni (n 26) 28–29.

³³ eg, Pendas, Devin O, ‘“The Magical Scent of the Savage”: Colonial Violence, the Crisis of Civilization, and the Origins of the Legalist Paradigm of War’ (2007) 30 Boston College International & Comparative Law Review 29, 31Google Scholar (‘Above all, regulating military conduct was either ad hoc, through Royal ordinances issued for specific campaigns, or customary and largely unenforceable … In either case, its promulgation and enforcement was national (or occasionally bilateral), rather than international in scope’).

³⁴ eg, Roberts (n 29) 116–20; Pendas (n 31) 38–39; Slye, Ronald and Van-Schaack, Beth, International Criminal Law: The Essentials (Kluwer 2008) 12–38Google Scholar.

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³⁸ ibid 143–44.

³⁹ ibid.

⁴⁰ ibid 122.

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⁵⁷ ibid 428–30.

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⁶⁰ Ancel (n 43) 341.

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⁶³ eg, James Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England (Vol 2, Macmillan 1883) 62–63.

⁶⁴ Bohrer (n 44) 464–71.

⁶⁵ Lauterpacht, Hersch, ‘International Law after the Second World War’ in Lauterpacht, Eli (ed), International Law: Collected Papers – Vol 2(1) (Cambridge University Press 1975) 159, 166Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ 1944 Memorandum (n 23) 7, 4.

⁶⁷ Bohrer (n 44) passim.

⁶⁸ ibid 468–69.

⁶⁹ Benno Teschke, The Myth of 1648 (Verso 2003) 2.

⁷⁰ eg, Maine, Henry Sumner, Ancient Law (John Murray 1861) 1–20Google Scholar.

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⁷³ eg, Vergé, Charles, ‘Le droit des gens avent et depuis 1789’ in Martens, Georg Friedrich, Précis du droit des gens modernes de l'Europe, Vol 1 (Guillaumin et Cie 1864) I, XLGoogle Scholar.

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⁷⁷ Schabas (n 1) 188–89.

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⁸⁰ Guilfoyle, Douglas, International Criminal Law (Oxford University Press 2016) 292Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Joyner, Christopher, International Law in the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield 2005) 51Google Scholar.

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⁸⁵ ibid 6.

⁸⁶ Loughlin, Martin, Foundations of Public Law (Oxford University Press 2010) 68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁸⁸ Pennington, Kenneth, The Prince and the Law (University of California Press 1993) 269–90Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Brincat, Shannon, ‘Death to Tyrants: Self-Defence, Human Rights and Tyrannicide – Part I’ (2008) 4 Journal of International Political Theory 212, 221–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bracton (n 87) 109–10; Trim, David, ‘Intervention in European History c.1520–1850’ in Recchia, Stefano and Welsh, Jennifer (eds), Just and Unjust Military Intervention (Cambridge University Press 2013) 21, 26–27Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Gentili, Alberico, De Iure Belli Libri Tres (1612) (Rolfe, John tr, Clarendon Press 1933) 323Google Scholar.

⁹¹ ibid 325.

⁹² eg, ibid 323 (noting the trial of King Conradin in 1268).

⁹³ Note that during the Reformation Era, the tyranny doctrine was gravely abused in numerous cases out of sectarian motivations. Yet, this abuse should not lead us to disregard that doctrine as a legal norm. The fact of the matter is that the doctrine was not abused in all cases. Moreover, the reasoning presented, when the doctrine was either used or abused, was increasingly non-sectarian, which gradually paved the way (along with many other factors) to more inclusive applications of the doctrine: see Trim, David, ‘“If a Prince Use Tyrannie towards His People”: Interventions on behalf of Foreign Populations in Early Modern Europe’ in Simms, Brendan and Trim, David (eds), Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge University Press 2011) 29, 32, 38–65Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ Brincat, Shannon, ‘Death to Tyrants: Self-Defence, Human Rights and Tyrannicide – Part II’ (2009) 5 Journal of International Political Theory 71, 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁵ Brincat (n 89) 217–19; Dan Edelstein, ‘Hostis Humani Generis: Devils, Natural Right, and Terror in the French Revolution’ (2007) 141 Telos 57, 61–63.

⁹⁶ Bohrer (n 44) 458–61.

⁹⁷ Rech, Walter, Enemies of Mankind (Brill 2013) 36, 78–79, 138–49Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ Trim (n 89) 40. One might argue that the actions taken against these minor eighteenth century rulers, and even those attempted against King Fredrick of Prussia, are unrelated to international law, because these rulers (Fredrick included) were subject to the Holy Roman Empire. Indeed, some scholars maintain that legal practices that existed within the Holy Roman Empire are irrelevant to the history of international law. Such scholars argue specifically that the Holy Roman mechanism for the punishment of tyrannical and aggressive estate rulers – especially its continued existence during the eighteenth century – demonstrates that the Holy Roman estates had never become distinct sovereigns and that the Holy Roman Empire remained to its very end (or, alternatively, gradually became) sufficiently centralised to be considered a single sovereign. The fact that the relevant substantive prohibitions (and not only the aforesaid institutional enforcement mechanism) were enshrined in formal Holy Roman constitutional edicts, presumably, further demonstrates that the punishment of individual Holy Roman estate rulers was an internal (non-international) matter: eg, Milton, Patrick, ‘Intervening Against Tyrannical Rule in the Holy Roman Empire during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’ (2015) 33 German History 1, 1–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, this position is flawed. First, it underrates the decentralised elements of the Holy Roman structure. The Holy Roman Empire never attained a monopoly in its realm either in war- and peace-making, or in criminal lawmaking and enforcement: Wilson (n 47) 4–15, 172. Second, this position provides an oversimplified account of the Empire. The structure of the Holy Roman Empire was chronically complex and (slowly and non-linearly) ever-changing. As a result, throughout the Empire's existence (as well as ever since) a dispute has persisted over its ‘correct’ definition. Alongside (and competing with) views that defined the Empire as a single (sufficiently centralised) sovereign entity, there have always been opinions that defined it as a supranational or international entity of one kind or another. In various periods, including the eighteenth century, an internationalist definition of the Empire was the dominant view: Rech (n 97) 135–36; Wilson (n 47) 4–15. Third, the aforesaid position suffers from anachronism because it assesses the Holy Roman Empire and its estates based on a sovereignty conception that had consolidated only during the late nineteenth century (nearly a century after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire), according to which ‘sovereignty … could not be a matter of degree; it was an on/off affair’: Kennedy (n 46) 123. By contrast, under the sovereignty conception that was prevalent until the late nineteenth century, ‘there were many sovereigns and many types of sovereignty, which overlapped unproblematically’: Kennedy (n 46) 122–23. Thus, under the contemporaneous sovereignty conception, each Holy Roman estate was commonly considered a distinct sovereign in the ‘eyes’ of the law of nations, irrespective of whether the Holy Roman Empire (as a whole) was also considered as such: see, eg, Chisholm v Georgia 2 US 419 (1793), para 14 (US Attorney-General: ‘[In the] Germanic Empire … [t]he Princes wage war without the consent of their paramount sovereign; they even wage war upon each other; nay upon the Emperor himself … they are distinct sovereignties’); Karl Gottlob Günther, Europäisches Völkerrecht in Friedenszeiten nach Vernunft, Verträgen und Herkommen mit Anwendung auf die teutschen Reichsstände (Richtersche Buchhandlung 1792) 169 (stating that with regard both to the Holy Roman Empire ‘as a whole, as well as its individual sovereigns … the principles of international law apply between them and others, unless their link and dependence to the higher State [ie the Holy Roman Empire] requires particular limitations’); see also Verzijl, Jan HW, International Law in Historical Perspective, Vol 1 (Sijthoff 1968) 404–05Google Scholar. Moreover, only with the late nineteenth century consolidation of the aforesaid new conception of ‘sovereignty[,] would come a sharpening of distinctio[n] between … international and municipal or domestic law’: Kennedy (n 46) 119. This sharp distinction did not exist earlier. Instead, local laws, especially of a penal nature, were commonly considered local manifestations of the universal law, adapting the universal law to the unique local conditions: see above notes 41–43 and accompanying text. Accordingly, even during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the legal basis for the tyranny and aggression prohibitions applied to estate rulers was not only Holy Roman constitutional edicts but also the law of nations: see Rech (n 97) 135–36 (with regard to aggression); Trossbach, Werner, ‘Power and Good Governance – The Removal of Ruling Princes in the Holy Roman Empire 1680–1794’ in Coy, Jason Philip, Marschke, Benjamin and Sabean, David W (eds), The Holy Roman Empire Reconsidered (Berghahm Books 2010) 191, 192Google Scholar (with regard to tyranny). Nevertheless, this is not to say that the Holy Roman law and law of nations fully converged: regarding some aspects of these prohibitions, the Holy Roman law added certain substantive constraints; even more significantly, the Holy Roman law established an institutional penal enforcement mechanism that did not exist elsewhere: see von Friedeburg, Robert, ‘Natural Law Jurisprudence, Arguments from History and Constitutional Struggle in the Early Enlightenment’ in Hochstrasser, TJ and Schroder, Peter (eds), Early Modern Natural Law Theories (Kluwer 2003) 141, 142Google Scholar. Yet, irrespective of its unique attributes and of contemporary awareness of those distinct facets, the aforesaid Holy Roman law was still, to a considerable degree, considered an expression of the related law of nations: eg, Rech (n 97) 135–36; von Friedeburg, ibid 142. Furthermore, because the Holy Roman law was not regarded as unrelated to the law of nations, some of its originally unique aspects gradually expanded beyond the bounds of the Empire: see Wheaton, Henry, History of the Law of Nations in Europe and America (Gould, Banks & Co 1845) 77Google Scholar (quoting Hallam: ‘The law of nations … grew out of the public law of the empire. To narrow, as far as possible, the rights of war and of conquest, was a natural principle of those who belonged to [most Holy Roman] States’); Lesaffer, Randall, ‘The Grotian Tradition Revisited: Change and Continuity in the History of International Law’ (2002) 73 British Yearbook of International Law 103, 128–37Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ Bohrer (n 44) 482.

¹⁰⁰ ibid 457–58.

¹⁰¹ ibid.

¹⁰² Carlyle, Thomas, History of Friedrich the Second Called Frederick the Great, Vol 5 (Clarke & Co 1890) 82Google Scholar (emphasis added).

¹⁰³ Bohrer (n 44) 458–61.

¹⁰⁴ ibid 461.

¹⁰⁵ Declaration of the Powers against Napoleon (entered into force 13 March 1815).

¹⁰⁶ Protocol (19 November 1818) (in French), quoted in H Hale Bellot, ‘Memorandum on the Detention of Napoleon Buonaparte’, appended to British Committee Memorandum (n 10) 364, 382 (translation for the author by Benji Grunbaum).

¹⁰⁷ Bohrer (n 44) 405–26.

¹⁰⁸ Bellot (n 106) 382.

¹⁰⁹ The inaccurate account of Napoleon's case that developed during the First World War, and which has become the prevalent narrative among international lawyers, originated (to a considerable degree) from two memorandums: one British and the other American (Schabas's account of Napoleon's case is clearly influenced by these, and related sources from the First World War era: Schabas (n 1) 3–4, 9, 20–22, 38–40, 62, 274–80). The (earlier) British memorandum was written, by H Hale Bellot, for the British Committee of Enquiry into the Breaches of the Laws of War: Bellot (n 106) 365–91. Its aim was to provide support for the Committee's position that ‘[a]ssuming that … [the ex-Kaiser] is to be dealt with, two courses might be taken—he might be treated summarily and administratively without any trial, in much the same manner as Napoleon was dealt with in 1815, or he might be tried before a Tribunal such as has been suggested above. One of several objections to the former mode of treatment is that it would slur over notable differences between the two cases. Napoleon was not charged with having during the Hundred Days carried on war contrary to the usages of civilised nations. His offence, if any, was either that he was a rebel to the lawful French Government or that he had violated the arrangement agreed to by him in 1814. The moral effect of confinement or internment of the ex-Kaiser without a trial would be much less than that of proceedings in which he would be heard and, if found guilty, punished accordingly. The opinion of the majority of the members of the Committee on the whole is in favour of the second course’: British Committee Memorandum (n 10) 29–30.

Bellot's memorandum quotes sources that imply that during Napoleon's time some considered Napoleon's actions to be international crimes. Yet, the memorandum does not stress that position. Instead, it stresses the contemporary British position, which supported holding Napoleon in perpetual administrative detention (the course of action that was eventually taken). Furthermore, the memorandum does not mention the position (supported primarily, as will be discussed below, by some high-ranking Prussian officers) that Napoleon could have been tried legally in a non-French tribunal. These omissions are probably partly as a result of insufficient accessibility to sources. Notably, the memorandum's account of the contemporary Prussian position relies primarily on a book that only reproduced Gneisenau's letters to Müffling from 27 June and 29 June 1815 and not the letter written by Müffling to Gneisenau between those dates on 28 June. As will be discussed shortly, that letter of 28 June is significant as it discusses the possibility of trying Napoleon in a Prussian tribunal. It is also likely that the memorandum's omissions are, to some degree, as a result of its British orientation, which unconsciously influenced its writer, leading him to focus on the British position at the time. Moreover, there is a possible less innocent reason for the memorandum's inaccurate account (an account that stresses the differences between the Kaiser's case and that of Napoleon). Recall that although the British Committee acknowledged in its recommendations to the British government that the Kaiser could either be tried or treated administratively (like Napoleon), most committee members supported the trial option (pointing out sources other than Napoleon's case as legal bases for such a trial). Recall further that the British Committee in those recommendations stressed that ‘[o]ne of several objections to [treating the Kaiser administratively, like Napoleon] … is that it would slur over notable differences between the two cases’: British Committee Memorandum (n 10) 29. Thus, it is possible that the memorandum's omissions were intentional, aiming to convince the British government that the Kaiser's case differed considerably from that of Napoleon, thereby steering it away from following in the footsteps of its predecessors of the Napoleonic era.

The second influential memorandum from the First World War era to address Napoleon's case is an American memorandum submitted to the Commission on Responsibilities (David Hunter Miller and James Brown Scott, ‘Observations on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and for Crimes Committed in the War’, reproduced in David Hunter Miller, My Diary and the Conference of Paris, Vol 3 (1924) 458). The discussion of Napoleon's case in the American memorandum is much shorter than that of the British memorandum (1 page versus 26 pages) and, as mentioned, it is much less accurate. Here is that American account in its entirety: ‘The treatment of Napoleon may be mentioned as the most prominent example of political action taken to restrain a monarch who may be regarded as a menace to the general peace. After Waterloo the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate deposed him and denied the right of succession to his son. He was compelled to leave Paris, and at Malmaison planned flight to America. But from June 25th the Allied generals made the delivery of Napoleon's person one of the first and most imperative terms of an armistice. In a note of July 1st, Austria, Russia and Prussia declared that for the peace of Europe Napoleon Bonaparte must be delivered up to their keeping. On July 15th the ex-Emperor surrendered himself to the English. The Convention of August 2, 1815, drawn up by the plenipotentiaries at Paris, contained the following clauses: 1. Napoleon Bonaparte was the prisoner of the Allies. 2. He was entrusted to the guardianship of Great Britain, and the King of England was empowered to choose the place where he should be interned. 3. Great Britain, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and France were to appoint commissioners, who without assuming the responsibilities of guards, should assure themselves of his presence. Napoleon's relatives were, in accordance with the protocol of August 27th, interned in various states of Europe. From England, whither he had been carried on the Bellerophon, Napoleon was sent by the British government to St. Helena. He forfeited the title of Emperor and was henceforth treated officially as a general. The remainder of his days were passed under the surveillance of the commissioners of the Allies’: ibid 470–71.

Compared with the British memorandum, it is even far less likely that the reasons behind the inaccuracies in the American memorandum are entirely innocent. A main aim and primary objective of that memorandum was to assert that only political, and not legal, punitive actions could be taken against the Kaiser: ibid 456–57, 470, 476). The memorandum did so primarily by examining several cases (Napoleon's case included) and arguing that the punitive actions taken in each of these cases were not legal but political in nature. Thus, it is unsurprising that the memorandum depicted Napoleon's case as it did.

¹¹⁰ Bohrer (n 44) 399, 420–44.

¹¹¹ ‘Liverpool to Eldon (1 October 1815)’ in Twiss, Horace, The Public and Private Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon with Selections from his Correspondence, Vol 1 (John Murray 1844) 413Google Scholar.

¹¹² Schabas (n 1) 3. Note that Schabas does not merely claim that at the time there was an overall lack of motivation for foreign rulers to charge a ruler of a different sovereignty; rather that there was a lack of a legal basis for doing so. This is evident from the fact that he goes on to argue that no relevant international crime existed.

¹¹³ Gorlitz, Walter, History of the German General Staff (Praeger 1953) 46Google Scholar.

¹¹⁴ Reported in ‘Müffling to Gneisenau' (28 June 1815)’ in Ernest Henderson, Side Lights on English History (Bell & Sons 1900) 296 (emphasis added).

¹¹⁵ Ben Brockman-Hawe, ‘Punishing Warmongers for Their “Mad and Criminal Projects”: Bismarck’s Proposal for an International Criminal Court to Assign Responsibility for the Franco-Prussian War’ (2017) 52 Tulsa Law Review 101, 108.

¹¹⁶ ibid.

¹¹⁷ ibid 109.

¹¹⁸ Busch, Moritz, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of His History (Copp, Clark Company 1898) 189Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Lesaffer, Randall, ‘Aggression before Versailles’ (2018) 29 European Journal of International Law 773, 777CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹²¹ ibid 67.

¹²² ibid 68.

¹²³ United Nations War Crimes Commission, History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Development of the Laws of War (His Majesty's Stationery Office 1948) 189.

¹²⁴ Schabas, William A, Unimaginable Atrocities (Oxford University Press 2012) 51–53Google Scholar.

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¹²⁶ ibid 148.

¹²⁷ ibid 154.

¹²⁸ ibid 153.

¹²⁹ ibid.

¹³⁰ See Bohrer (n 44) 471–78.

¹³¹ ibid 472–73.

¹³² Robespierre, Speech, 3 December 1792, http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/324.

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¹³⁷ Voltaire, The Philosophical Dictionary (1764) (W Dugdale 1843) 263.

¹³⁸ The term ‘Boxer War (1900–01)’ refers here to the internationalised (later) part of the anti-colonialist and anti-Christian uprising that occurred in China between 1897 and 1901. In European and American sources this uprising is commonly known as the ‘Boxer Rebellion’. The Chinese rebels were known, in English, as the Boxers because many of them were practitioners of Chinese martial arts, which in Europe were referred to as ‘Chinese boxing’. The rebellion ended following military intervention by a multinational allied force (consisting of American, Austro-Hungarian, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian soldiers). The actions of many (if not all) of the allied states were not directed solely by a benevolent anti-atrocity motivation but also by colonialist, and even racist, motivations. Indeed, many atrocities were committed by members of the allied force: Fontenoy, Paul, ‘Boxer Rebellion’ in Li, Xiaobing (ed), China at War: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO 2012) 24, 24–26Google Scholar.

¹³⁹ Wu, Ziming, Chinese Christianity (Brill 2012) 49Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁰ Reproduced in Clements, Paul, The Boxer Rebellion (Columbia University Press 1915) 207Google Scholar.

¹⁴¹ Brockman-Hawe, Ben, ‘Accountability for “Crimes Against the Laws of Humanity” in Boxer China: An Experiment with International Justice at Paoting-Fu’ (2017) 38 University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 627Google Scholar, passim.

¹⁴² Bohrer (n 44) 474.

¹⁴³ ibid 471–78.

¹⁴⁴ eg, Robert Cryer, ‘Towards an Integrated Regime for the Prosecution of International Crimes’, PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2001, 315.

¹⁴⁵ Schabas (n 1) 316.

¹⁴⁶ ibid 298.

¹⁴⁷ Commission Report (n 8) 145.

¹⁴⁸ Lapradelle and Larnaude (n 11) 20.

¹⁴⁹ Miller and Scott (n 109) 458.

¹⁵⁰ Scott, James Brown, ‘The Trial of the Kaiser’ in Mandell House, Edward and Seymour, Charles (eds), What Really Happened at Paris (Charles Scriber's Son 1921) 231Google Scholar.

¹⁵¹ Note the incongruity in the fact that the only known First World War references by officials to earlier international criminal tribunals are these American sources, which mention them only to assert that they could not be regarded as legal precedents. If the Americans were (a) opposed to the idea of an international criminal tribunal and (b) the only ones who possessed knowledge of these earlier cases, what could they possibly have had to gain from presenting these cases to the other allies (who did support the tribunal idea)? Would it not be far more logical, under these conditions, for the Americans to keep such information hidden? To the best of my knowledge nobody has provided, thus far, a good answer to this question. One possibility is that these sources provide us with evidence of only one side of the debate: namely, that these American sources were written in response to opposing legal opinions, in which those earlier cases were presented as legal precedents for the creation of an international criminal tribunal, and these pro-tribunal sources simply became lost over time.

¹⁵² Miller and Scott (n 109) 475.

¹⁵³ Scott (n 150) 247.

¹⁵⁴ Pritchard, RJ, ‘International Humanitarian Intervention and Establishment of an International Jurisdiction over Crimes Against Humanity: The National and International Military Trials in Crete in 1898’ in Carey, John, Dunlap, William and Pritchard, RJ (eds), International Humanitarian Law: Origins (Brill 2003) 1Google Scholar; Brockman-Hawe, Ben, ‘A Supranational Criminal Tribunal for the Colonial Era: The Franco-Siamese Mixed Court’ in Heller, Kevin Jon and Simpson, Gerry (eds), The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials (Oxford University Press 2013) 50Google Scholar; Gordon, Gregory, ‘International Criminal Law's “Oriental Pre-Birth”: The 1894–1900 Trials of the Siamese, Ottomans and Chinese’ in Bergsmo, Morten and others (eds), Historical Origins of International Criminal Law, Vol 3 (Torkel Opsahl 2015) 119Google Scholar; Brockman-Hawe (n 141); Lemnitzer, Jan Martin, ‘International Commissions of Inquiry and the North Sea Incident: A Model for a MH17 Tribunal?’ (2017) 27 European Journal of International Law 923Google Scholar; Ben Brockman-Hawe, ‘Constructing Humanity's Justice: Accountability for “Crimes Against Humanity” in the Wake of the Syria Crisis of 1860’ in Bergsmo and others, ibid 181; Brockman-Hawe (n 115).

¹⁵⁵ Gordon (n 154) 120.

¹⁵⁶ Brockman-Hawe (n 141) 685.

¹⁵⁷ Ziv Bohrer and Benedikt Pirker, ‘List of Tribunals Uncovered as a Result of Preliminary Research’ app to Project Proposal: Forgotten History of Pre-Nuremberg International Criminal Tribunals (prepared for submission to the Swiss Network for International Studies) (on file with author).

¹⁵⁸ Anne Orford, ‘On International Legal Method’ (2013) 1 London Review of International Law 166, 173.

¹⁵⁹ Brendan Simms and David Trim, ‘Towards a History of Humanitarian Intervention’ in Simms and Trim (n 93) 1, 3–4, 10–15.

¹⁶⁰ Robert Cover, ‘Nomos and Narrative’ (1983–84) 97 Harvard Law Review 4, 4–5.

¹⁶¹ Ford, Richard, ‘Law's Territory (A History of Jurisdiction)’ (1999) 97 Michigan Law Review 843, 863CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶² Koskenniemi, Martti, ‘Histories of International Law: Dealing with Eurocentrism’ (2019) 19 Rechtsgeschichte 152, 176Google Scholar.

¹⁶³ ibid.

¹⁶⁴ See above nn 75–76 and accompanying text.

¹⁶⁵ Simpson, Garry, ‘Unprecedents’ in Talligren, Immi and Skouteris, Thomas (eds), The New Histories of International Criminal Law (Oxford University Press 2019) 12, 17Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁶ Whetham (n 76) 52.

¹⁶⁷ See Mark Osiel, ‘The Demise of International Criminal Law’, Humanity-Blog, 16 November 2013, http://www.humanityjournal.org/blog/2013/11/demise-international-criminal-law/; see also Douglas Guilfoyle, ‘Part I – This is not Fine: The International Court in Trouble’, EJIL: Talk!, 21 March 2019, https://www.ejiltalk.org/part-i-this-is-not-fine-the-international-criminal-court-in-trouble.

¹⁶⁸ Nichols, Lionel, The International Criminal Court and the End of Impunity in Kenya (Springer 2015) 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁷⁰ Kunz, Josef, ‘The Chaotic Status of the Laws of War and the Urgent Necessity for Their Revision’ (1951) 45 American Journal of International Law 37, 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁷³ Fiske, John, Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, Vol 1 (Houghton, Mifflin & Co 1903) 58Google Scholar.

¹⁷⁴ Schabas (n 1) 3–4.

¹⁷⁵ Fiske (n 173) 58; Allen Varasdi, Myth Information (Random House 1989) 131.

¹⁷⁶ Kurlansky, Mark, Basque History of the World (Random House 2011) 56–57Google Scholar.

¹⁷⁷ Varasdi (n 175) 131.

¹⁷⁸ Taylor, Annette Kujawski and Kowalski, Patricia, ‘Naïve Psychological Science: The Prevalence, Strength and Sources of Misconceptions’ (2004) 54 Psychological Record 15, 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷⁹ Varasdi (n 175) 2.

¹⁸⁰ Tuchman, Gaye, ‘Historical Social Science: Methodologies, Methods and Meanings’ in Denzin, Norman K and Lincoln, Yvonna S (eds), Handbook of Qualitative Research (Sage 1994) 306, 310Google Scholar.

¹⁸¹ Kuhn (n 171) 72–91.