First-Instance Judgment in the Radovan Karadžić Case in the Context of Political Circumstances within the Dayton Constitutional Framework: The View from Inside

First-Instance Judgment in the Radovan Karadžić Case
in the context of Political Circumstances
within the Dayton Constitutional Framework:
The View from Inside

Zlatan Begić

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law/University of Tuzla

Currently, Bosnia and Herzegovina is a state of continuing political crisis that threatens the maintenance of the hardly established peace. The enactment of the judgment against Radovan Karadžić on the threshold of the third decade of implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, and a political crisis created by the decision to call a referendum in the Republika Srpska have showed a huge difference between the ruling political options in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This article briefly analyzes the first-instance judgment in the Radovan Karadžić case as a characteristic example of the judicial practice of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, its impact and possible consequences on the public opinion, ethnically confronted policies as well as on the possible redesigning of the constitutional structure of the state, in order to try to answer the question: “How has the practice of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia affected the process of the implementation of peace and building democratic institutions within the Dayton constitutional framework?”.