Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously stated that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”1 When it comes to justice for atrocity crimes, the shape and length of that arc varies significantly by situation and is impacted by a number of factors. On one end of the spectrum might be the Nuremberg Trials (and similarly, the Control Council Law Number 10 hearings, and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East as relates to Japan), where there was a relatively tight parabola between Nazi atrocities and prosecutions. On the other end are events that occurred long ago (and may be ongoing) for which there is yet to be meaningful accountability; think North Korea and the extensive evidence of crimes against humanity there, without any accountability as of yet. Along this continuum fall other situations, whose position might conceptually take into account not only how long in raw time some measure of accountability takes, but also the robustness of that accountability process.
J. Andrew Boyle