Laughland, J: History of Political Trials

Contents: The Trial of Charles I and the Last Judgement - The Trial of Louis XVI and the Terror - War Guilt after World War I - Defeat in the Dock: the Riom Trial - Justice as Purge: Marshal Petain Faces his Accusers - Treachery on Trial: the Case of Vidkun Quisling - Nuremberg: Making War Illegal - Creating Legitimacy: the Trial of Marshal Antonescu - Ethnic Cleansing and National Cleansing in Czechoslovakia, 1945-1947 - People's Justice in Liberated Hungary - From Mass Execution to Amnesty and Pardon: Postwar Trials in Bulgaria, Finland, and Greece - Politics as Conspiracy: the Tokyo Trials - The Greek Colonels, Emperor Bokassa, and the Argentine Generals: Transitional Justice, 1975-2007 - Revolution Returns: the Trial of Nicolae Ceausescu - A State on Trial: Erich Honecker in Moabit - Jean Kambanda, Convicted without Trial - Kosovo and the New World Order: the Trial of Slobodan MiloSevic - Regime Change and the Trial of Saddam Hussein.

The Author: John Laughland is an author and journalist who has taught politics and philosophy at universities in Paris and Rome. He has published several books including The Tainted Source: The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea (1997) and Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice (2007). He has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday and many other British, European, and American newspapers.

This is a formidable and well-documented counterblast to a developing modern orthodoxy, expressing a point of view that many readers will not even have suspected existed, let alone read - Anthony Daniels, Spectator. A useful and controversial contribution to the debate about victor's justice, and a valuable warning that international war crimes tribunals need to operate with precision and care - Jonathan Steele, Guardian. In this important, timely and cogently argued book John Laughland lays bare the truth that political trials, by which he means trials of heads of state or government ministers for acts of state...have never been properly constituted nor properly conducted judicial proceedings... Invaluable - Robert Stewart in the Spectator. A stupendous book - Daniel Hannan, Daily Telegraph. Laughland asks some pointed questions that will discomfit even those who disagree with him. Who has the right to adjudicate the acts of another state? What accountability is there for international tribunals? To what extent are they victors' justice? - Adam LeBor, Sunday Telegraph. This richly documented, very readable and strikingly indignant book shows how a well-meant global development of our times has gone off the rails ... How will the community of human rights activists deal with John Laughland's charges? I hope we shall be told - Geoffrey Best, Times Literary Supplement.