It was day one of the defense’s case. I was in Chicago. I had planned to wake up at 2:30 AM and watch over the Internet as Charles Taylor’s defense team laid out their case in The Hague at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. But I had overslept. When I woke up around 9:00 AM I ran to my computer, but the lawyer had wrapped up for the day. I read some news articles online and learned the basics: Defense would argue over the next months that Taylor, the former president of Liberia, was a peacemaker for Sierra Leone, and that the prosecution had not proved his criminal responsibility for aiding Sierra Leonean rebel groups that committed…

Over 120 countries have united to form the International Criminal Court—the first permanent court created to prosecute perpetrators, no matter how powerful, of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The Reckoning follows dynamic ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and his team for three years across four continents as he issues arrest warrants for Lord’s Resistance Army leaders in Uganda, puts Congolese warlords on trial, shakes up the Colombian justice system, and charges Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir with genocide in Darfur. The Reckoning keeps you on the edge of your seat.

As a joint public-policy and law student, I took Professor Chris Stone’s “Workshop on Crime and Criminal Justice Reform in Global Context” during the Spring of 2009. Harvard’s criminal justice program connects research closely with the world of practice, so as fieldwork for this class, I spent spring break in the Hague with justice and human rights NGOs from all over the world, leaders from the International Criminal Court, and staff from Harvard’s Hauser Center. On this trip the group I was a part of was tasked with beginning to understand and describe the ‘network’ of the ICC within the larger international criminal justice system.

In preparation for the Consultative Conference on International Criminal Justice to be held in September at the United Nations in New York, a planning meeting was held in May 2009 in which Hauser Center staff interviewed Silvana Arbia, Registrar of the International Criminal Court, and Giovanni Bassu, Special Advisor on External Relations and Cooperation in the Office of the Registrar, on the role of the Registrar, NGOs and Civil Society.