The Defense of the Indefensible

Bloggingheads posted a fascinating conversation (see video above) over the weekend between Mark Leon Goldberg of UN Dispatch and Kevin Jon Heller of Opinio Juris. Heller, an American law professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, is currently involved as an advisor to the defense of Radovan Karadžić, the accused Bosnian Serb war criminal, in Karadžić's trial at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. For those of you not old enough to remember the 1990s, Karadžić is allegedly the man behind the massacre at Srebrenica in 2005, in which 7,500 men and boys from the area were killed.

Not surprisingly, Heller has come in for some criticism for his decision to be involved in any way whatsoever with the defense of a man like Karadžić (who, like Slobodan Milošević, is representing himself). Heller, however, answers his critics by saying that part of what defines liberal, democratic cultures is the belief that even an accused monster deserves a fair trial. As brutal and despised as Saddam Hussein was, his trial and subsequent execution at the hands of a jeering lynch mob did not sit well with people around the world who value a judicial system based on law rather than revenge. Having said this, though, Heller, citing his Jewish heritage as a conflict of interest, goes on to say that he would not have represented Adolph Hitler had the Führer not offed himself in the waning days of World War II.

And how, you're no doubt wondering, does any of this relate to Korea?

Let's say North Korean leader Kim Jong-il somehow finds himself in a jail cell at the International Criminal Court in The Hague later this year. And imagine that you're a criminal defense attorney. Would you represent him?