When the team I worked on at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, which indicted Slobodan Milosevic during the Kosovo war, we were making justice “in real time.” Time slowed a great deal after that, coming to a stop this week when Milosevic died. The Serb strongman responsible for so much bloodshed died not as a master, but a prisoner of international justice.

Milosevic’s death is a blow to the tribunal. When he was transferred to The Hague in 2001, hopes were high that the architect of ethnic cleansing would face justice, and a definitive record of the war would be established. Instead, Milosevic will become a grim footnote. It’s hard to say he won, but clearly international law hasn’t.

The truth is, we expect too much of international justice. Tribunals have proliferated since the cold war, becoming the international community’s tool of choice for responding to mass violence. In the process, law has crowded out other options. We condemn amnesties as unacceptable impunity and insist on the absolute priority of criminal justice. But law is a fragile process with uncertain effects. Claims that international courts deter violence, create a record, or promote reconciliation remain speculative.

The tribunal has failed to deter: Both Srebrenica and Kosovo happened on its watch. To some that just shows Milosevic should have been indicted earlier rather than making him a player in the Peace Accords at Dayton, Ohio. Maybe, but then we might not have gotten a Bosnian peace deal.

Milosevic’s death means no verdict, denying the tribunal the chance to establish a definitive record. Yet this only highlights the problem with expecting international justice to play a truth-telling role in the first place. Courts don’t write histories; prosecutors go for conviction, not a record. Nor has the tribunal contributed to regional reconciliation. Few Serbs accept the tribunal’s legitimacy. Former Yugoslavia’s other communities may praise the tribunal when it convicts their enemies but not when it convicts one of their own.

And what are the costs? International trials are slow. They are expensive. More fundamentally, fetishsing law narrows options for supporting transitional societies. Trials are important, but it’s wrong to prioritise convictions over peace and stability: Sometimes insisting on arrest can destabilise fragile states.

Now that Milosevic is dead, focus has shifted to Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadjic and Ratko Mladic as the key players who must be brought to justice. I, too, hope they are tried, but only if it contributes to regional stability, not because outsiders need a villain in the dock.

Courts can produce individual justice, but not necessarily international justice. Their ability to deter war, define truth, or promote reconciliation is unproven. The energy expended on tribunals might be better invested in building consensus on robust, timely intervention when crimes are being committed rather than seeking punishment afterward. — The Christian Science Monitor