SOME of the Iraqi judges who are being prepared to handle Saddam Hussein's trial haven't handled anything more complicated than a traffic case, says an American law professor who helped train them.
Despite the judges' lack of experience with complex litigation, Case Western Reserve University law professor Michael Scharf was impressed by their knowledge.
"They're lower-level court judges and the reason for that is because the higher-level judges were seen as corrupted...
Saddam will...be the first person tried for the crime of aggression since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi officials following World War II, and the case will define aggression for the International Criminal Court.
"The judges that I was working with were very conscious of the fact that they were going to be making history," Prof Scharf said.
~Does Mr. Scharf's observation on corruption have any basis in fact? In Chicago until recently the 'lower-level' traffic court judges took many more bribes than the judges who routinely fixed murder cases. Chicago's traffic-court judges were younger than the criminal court judges, in that way they were certainly 'less' corrupt.
Posted by Cieciel at November 28, 2004 09:43 AM