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AbstractAir strikes are the signature modality of violence used by NATO militaries. When civilian victims of NATO air strikes have turned to courts in NATO countries, they have generally not been successful. What are the legal techniques and legal knowledges deployed in Western courts that render Western aerial violence legal or extralegal? The article analyzes the responses by European courts to two sets of NATO bombings: the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia and a September 2009 air strike near Kunduz, Afghanistan. The judgments rely on two forms of "legal technicalities": the drawing of jurisdictional boundaries that exclude the airspace taken up by the bombers and the ground on which victims stood when they were killed as well as particular visual regimes that facilitate not seeing people on the ground as civilians.

How do legal norms travel, spread, and change along the way? This article investigates the travels of one model of criminal responsibility for state violence as part of the global project of transitional justice. Claus Roxin's model was first published in West Germany 1963 in order to address impunity for Nazi crimes, was not applied in its intended context, made its judicial debut in Argentina in 1985, had a comeback in Germany in 1994, traveled throughout Latin America, and was taken up at the International Criminal Court. This case study leads to three conclusions about the travel of legal concepts. First, the appeal of theoretical concepts has much to do with the context in which they are used. Second, traveling keeps concepts alive and changes them. Third, transitional justice and responsibility practices have become global and transnationalized in ways that highlight broader global inequalities and transnational hierarchies.

RésuméLes procès de Nuremberg constituent le fondement du droit criminel international contemporain. Néanmoins, ces procès sont rarement étudiés dans un contexte social et conceptuel plus large. Cet article examine le contexte ainsi que le rôle du concept de «civilisation» tel qu'utilisé dans le cas deU.S. v. Altstoetter, c'est-à-dire le procès de 1947 des juges et administrateurs judiciaires nazis à Nuremberg. L'auteure place la référence au concept de «civilisation» telle qu'évoqué parAltstoetterau sein d'une tradition du droit international qui définit la loi et la civilisation comme étant «co-constitutives». La courAltstoetterconceptualisait l'Allemagne comme un pays essentiellenient civilisé tombant dans une violence barbare et anarchique. Cette représentation aide la cour à établir la culpabilité des accusés, à blâmer la violence nazie sur l'absence de loi ainsi qu'à établir sa propre autorité.