Extraordinary Justice: Military Tribunals in Historical and International Context.

• Author: Pun, Esther
• Position: Book review

Extraordinary Justice: Military Tribunals in Historical and International Context. By Peter Judson Richards, New York: New York University Press, 2007. Pp. xi, 267. $45.00 (hardcover).

The subject of military tribunals garners great interest in times of war and falls into neglect in times of peace. As such, Extraordinary Justice is a study that should be of particular moment. Peter Judson Richards focuses upon the "mechanism of the military juridical response--i.e., one that takes place outside of the normal Article III judicial process" (p. 2) and asserts that a gap exists in scholarship about military tribunals, which are also known as "military commissions" in the American context, precisely because of its unstructured nature. In order to better understand the controversial use of military commissions in the current "war against terror," Richards documents the historical contexts of military tribunals to show how these commissions function and the purposes they have served in times of war. In this study, Richards primarily focuses upon the necessity and role of military tribunals in four conflicts: the American Civil War, the Boer War, World War I and World War II. Ultimately, Extraordinary Justice provides a useful history of military tribunals so that the reader may approach the controversy over military commissions in the post-9/11 world with a better understanding of how they function.

Just as Richards observes that the assessment of "the efficacy of military juridical processes must include consideration of the complex network of larger historical, institutional, political, strategic, and operational power structures within which these implements assume a subordinate place," his book is structured so that the subject of the tribunals themselves do indeed "assume a subordinate place" within the larger historical context of each conflict (p. 137). Richards weaves a layered narrative that examines the role military tribunals assumed during times of war as opposed to civil courts. In particular, he focuses on the social and historical forces that the military tribunals were specifically designed to address. Rather than making a specific assertion justifying or questioning the efficacy of military tribunals, Extraordinary Justice primarily provides a historical account of the tribunals.

In Chapter 1, Richards attempts to trace the use of military tribunals in the United States dating from the founding through the Civil War. He begins by...