Includes bibliographical references and index.

The history of universal jurisdiction and its place in international law / M. Cherif Bassiouni -- Comment : the quest for clarity / Stephen A. Oxman -- The growing support for universal jurisdiction in national legislation / A. Hays Butler -- The Adolf Eichmann case : universal and national jurisdiction / Gary J. Bass -- Comment : connecting the threads in the fabric of international law / Lori F. Damrosch -- Assessing the Pinochet litigation : whither universal jurisdiction / Richard A. Falk -- Comment : universal jurisdiction and transitions to democracy / Pablo De Greiff -- The Hisse�ne Habr�e case : the law and politics of universal jurisdiction / Stephen P. Marks -- Defining the limits : universal jurisdiction and national courts / Ann-Marie Slaughter -- Universal jurisdiction, national amnesties, and truth commission : reconciling the irreconcilable / Leila Nadya Sadat -- The future of universal jurisdiction in the new architecture of transnational justice / Diane F. Orentlicher -- Universal jurisdiction and judicial reluctance : a new fourteen points / Michael Kirby -- Afterword : the politics of advancing international criminal justice / Lloyd Axworthy.

When former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London at the request of a Spanish judge, the world's attention was focused for the first time on the idea of universal jurisdiction. Universal jurisdiction stands for the principle that atrocities such as genocide, torture, and war crimes are so heinous and so universally abhorred that any state is entitled to prosecute these crimes in its national courts regardless where they were committed or the nationality of the perpetrators or the victims. In 2001, two Rwandan nuns were convicted in a Belgian court for atrocities committed in Rwanda against Rwandans. Serbs have been prosecuted in German courts, and a court in Senegal asserted universal jurisdiction over the former dictator of Chad, Hissene Habr�e. Universal jurisdiction is becoming a potent instrument of international law, but it is poorly understood by legal experts and remains a mystery to most public officials and citizens. "Universal Jurisdiction" brings together leading scholars to discuss the origins, evolution, and implications of this legal weapon against impunity. They examine the questions that cloud its future, and its role in specific cases involving Adolf Eichmann, Pinochet, Habr�e, and former Rwandan government officials, among others, in order to determine the proper place of universal jurisdiction in the emerging regime of international legal accountability.