[JURIST] The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] on Monday rejected [judgment, PDF] a motion [text, PDF] filed by former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic [case materials; JURIST news archive] challenging the legitimacy of the court. Karadzic claimed [JURIST report] that the UN Security Council [official website] overstepped its powers when it created the court in 1993. The tribunal summarily rejected this argument:

Whether the UNSC legally established the Tribunal is an issue that was unambiguously settled in 1995 in the Tadic case, when the Appeals Chamber held that the establishment of the Tribunal fell squarely within the powers of the UNSC under Article 41 of the Charter of the United Nations. On the basis of the reasoning set out in that decision, the Trial Chamber finds that the Accused's argument that the Tribunal was not legally constituted because it was not established through an international treaty is without merit. Indeed, the establishment of an international tribunal through an international treaty, as in the case of the International Criminal Court, is but one of the methods by which to set up such a tribuna1.