War Crimes Act of 1996 - Legislative History

Legislative History

The law criminalized breaches of the Geneva Conventions so that the United States could prosecute war criminals, specifically North Vietnamese soldiers who tortured U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War. The Department of Defense "fully support the purposes of the bill," recommending that it be expanded to include a longer list of war crimes. Because the United States generally followed the Conventions, the military recommended making breaches by U.S. soldiers war crimes as well "because doing so set a high standard for others to follow." The bill passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and by a voice vote in the House, showing that it was entirely uncontroversial at the time.

Ten years later, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applied to the War on Terrorism, with the unstated implication that any interrogation techniques that violated Common Article 3 constituted War Crimes. The possibility that American officials and soldiers could be prosecuted for war crimes for committing the "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" prohibited by the Conventions led to a series of proposals to make such actions legal in certain circumstances, which resulted in the Military Commissions Act of 2006.