Whats the problem with strict liability?
The idea that you can get life imprisonment, or even be executed, when the prosecutor hasn’t proved that you individually had done anything culpable, just that you happened to be the commander, is problematic in terms of the basic criminal paradigm of individual responsibility. If you veer too much toward strict liability, you’ll undermine the credibility and integrity of the proceedings. There was some danger of that in the Blaskic case before the Yugoslav tribunal. Blaskic was a Croatian general accused of being responsible for crimes committed by troops ostensibly under his command in central Bosnia. The trial chamber judgment didn’t clearly find proof that Blaskic had any knowledge of what was going on or that he did have effective control. He was found guilty anyway. But the Blaskic decision was overturned on appeal, and the latest appellate judgments have reined in the command responsibility doctrine and made clear that it’s not a strict liability standard—that there does have to
