The impact of the ICTY on the former Yugoslavia: an anticipatory postmortem

A strange thing about the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is that for most of its life, it has thought about its death. The Tribunal, of course, kept getting a reprieve. But today it seems more likely than not that the ICTY will indeed close down sometime in 2017, after the conclusion of the two cases it currently has at trial. Yet even after its closure, the ICTY will continue in a sort of un-death, through the unfortunately named Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, which will complete retrial and appellate proceedings in the cases currently tried before the ICTY.