Justice, amnesty, and the strange lessons of 1945

Abstract

The Author articulates the meaning of Justice and forgetting past offences (amnesty) in relation to the formation of The International Court of Justice in 1945 which settles disputes between states or gives legal opinions sent to it by agencies in UN. "In 1970 the court was asked to judge what legal consequences for states arose from the fact that South Africa kept a presence in Namibia in violation of Security Council Resolution 276. More recently it was asked to judge the legality of Israel’s wall of partition in Palestine. I wish to focus on this latter decision briefly, not because of the judgment but the reaction to the judgment." (pg 240)