In this book, Carlos Santiago Nino offers a provocative first-hand analysis of developments in Argentina during the 1980s, when a brutal military dictatorship gave way to a democratic government.

Nino played a key role in guiding the transition to democracy and in shaping the human rights policies of President Raul Alfonsin after the fall of the military junta in 1983: The centerpiece of Alfonsin's human rights program was the trial held in a federal court in Buenos Aires in 1985, which resulted in the convictions of five of the leading members of the junta that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983.

Placing the Argentine experience in the context of the war crime trials at Nuremberg, Tokyo, and elsewhere, Nino examines the broader questions raised by human rights trials.