1 In his separate opinion in the Nuclear Weapons case, Judge Mohammed Bed- oui, then the President of the International Court of Justice, called nuclear we- ons "the absolute evil. " There are a few other things which merit being called - solutely evil. They are the predicates of the International Criminal Court and of various domestic laws patterned on the Rome Statute: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression. A conference organized by the Berlin-based Republikanischer Anwältinnen- und Anwälteverein (Republican Lawyers As- ciation) and the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights was held in Berlin in June 2005 under the title Globalverfassung versus Realpolitik (Global Constitution versus Realpolitik). It dealt with the tension between these univ- sally accepted norms and the actual practice of governments in an age charact- ized by the ill-defined concept of the "war on terror. " This book is the outcome of that conference. It is intended for a wide variety of readers: academics, all kinds of jurists, as well as human rights activists, who sometimes know more about the applicable law than the legal experts. It owes its existence to a paradox: On the one hand, new structures for dealing with the most serious international crimes are being put into place.

The book explores recent developments in the international and national prosecution of persons accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. It considers the relationship between national and international law, science and practice, with emphasis on the emerging principle of universial jurisdiction and the effect of "the war on terror" on legal norms.