How well the various forms of tribunals work, their value as an adjunct to US and international efforts to bolster the rule of law, and their future in a world that is increasingly driven by conflict, will be the subject of what promises to be a fascinating conversation.
The group of French Waffen-SS men was summarily executed by the RMT without any form of military tribunal procedure, and their bodies left where they fell until an American burial team collected them.
Developing countries whose governments have been accused of atrocities, from Sudan to Sri Lanka, have argued that international tribunals are selectively applied to poor nations and represent a new form of imperialism.
But Mr. Obama and his advisers later decided that it was necessary to keep a form of the tribunals if some detainees were to receive any trial.
After the Supreme Court ruled in Mr. Hamdan's case that Mr. Bush needed Congressional permission to set up military commissions, Congress authorized a new form of the tribunals system to prosecute war crimes.
136 Others maintain that the decision should rest with the substitute decision-makers, or that conflicts between the health care team and the substitute decision-makers should be resolved by society (through the courts or some form of specialized tribunals).
Its ghost plot is the trial of Salim Hamdan, the Al Qaeda driver, in the form of a military tribunal, but we never see it or him.
So some form of "hybrid" international tribunal may have to be considered in future.
"This was another form of sabotage of the tribunal; there's been a long campaign to prove it's not credible," said May Chidiac, a former television news anchor.
The form of trial — international military tribunal — was chosen in part to avoid what Roosevelt's senior cabinet officials described as the "technical contentions and legalistic arguments" available in civilian courts.
