Assisting the Yugoslav Tribunal

Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal Clinic:

In 1996, the Managing Director of the Group, Michael Scharf, entered into a unique arrangement with Richard Goldstone, the Prosecutor of the Yugoslavia Tribunal, under which law students under the supervision of Scharf and other members of the Group would provide legal research and analysis to the war crimes Prosecutor on issues pending before the Tribunal. Funded in part by annual grants from the Open Society Institute (George Soros Foundation), this program has to date provided more than 120 legal memoranda and hundreds of thousands of pages of supporting research materials to the international tribunals on a wide range of legal issues relating to the prosecutions of individuals for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. The Program is currently run as "the War Crimes Research Lab" at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and as "The International War Crimes Prosecution Project" at New England School of Law.

Expert Opinion:

Through one of its members, the Group drafted extensive background papers for use in the preparation of the Prosecution’s case against Tihofil Blaskic. The papers addressed the relationship between ethnic violence and the political objectives of the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Croats. Assistance was also provided on preparing the indictment for Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes committed in Bosnia.