Even at its most decorous and solemn, the law has its limits, and they were on stark display last week. Within the walls of the courtroom at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, legal reasoning held sway as presiding judge Lord Ranald Sutherland issued the unanimous verdicts of a three-judge panel in the trial of two Libyans for mass murder. The decisions were the culmination of more than 12 years of anguished activism by family members, and almost a decade of diplomatic wrangling to secure the defendants and set the unique location and parameters of the trial. They were based on the...
