From Nuremberg to the Hague - Understanding International Law and Genocide

This course will excite and ignite passion and critical thinking skills in high school students getting ready to take on the world! It will explore and explain, in an understandable way, the complex  concept of using law and justice to provide accountability for the most serious crimes.  Through the lens of the applications that South Africa has made to bring the Israel/Gaza case to the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice an understanding of the Genocide Convention, the Geneva Convention and how international law works will be analyzed and understood.  

Students will leave the class with:

1) an understanding of the progression of international justice from the first courts of Nuremberg, through regional courts established to give justice to those in specific conflicts such as in Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia, to today’s established International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice and the real and important case before them.

2) a general framework for the crime of genocide as well as crimes against humanity and the Geneva convention and what the case before the international court against South Africa is all about.  

3) an understanding of the global politics that interact with international law and the historical progression of international law and politics in this arena. 

4) an expanded vocabulary of terms such as impunity, deterrence effect, complementarity that they can use to impress and irritate you with during dinner time conversations. 

5)  (hopefully) a passion for the pursuit of peace and justice and a more clear vision of how  this can best be achieved.