Mega-Trials

The term mega-trial emerged in relation to domestic criminal trials in the late 1980s and early 1990s. More recently, the term has also been applied to large cases before the various international courts and tribunals. Several important distinctions need to be drawn when talking about mega-trials, including the distinction between international and domestic mega-trials and the distinction between procedural and substantive mega-trials. Of course, these distinctions often overlap and one sees international mega-trials that are substantive in nature and domestic mega-trials that are procedural in nature. For example, whereas international mega-trials might include the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Court (ICC), or the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), domestic cases are dealt with solely by the local courts ...