IT sometimes feels like a week doesn’t pass without some former head of state or other alleged outlaw on the front page as a new international trial opens. This week alone there’s Charles Taylor’s sentencing hearing at the special court for Sierra Leone, the opening of Ratko Mladic’s trial at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and Khaled el-Masri’s extraordinary rendition case at the European court of human rights.

These and other cases are the product of a century-long effort towards the creation of an international judiciary. A first wave began in the 1920s, with the creation of an international court in The Hague. Many early cases involved allegations of the mistreatment of minority groups in various parts of Europe. The end of the Second World War unleashed a second wave, starting with the international military tribunal at Nuremberg and Tokyo and the creation of human rights courts in Europe and elsewhere.

A third wave came in the 1990s, following atrocities in the Balkans and Rwanda, the catalyst for creating the Yugoslav and Rwanda tribunals and — after five decades of effort — the Rome statute of the international criminal court. This was also the moment for the House of Lords’ ruling that Augusto Pinochet was not entitled to claim immunity for alleged international crimes.

Two developments are under way, distinct but proceeding hand in hand. The first is that the international institutions are necessary appendages to police the global rules that most people agree are needed for the proper functioning of our embryonic international order.

International courts are not limited to human rights and crime: others function in the economic sphere, to enforce free trade rules, intellectual property rights and foreign investments. Ironically, many of those criticising human rights and criminal courts for excessive interference in sovereign affairs are leading defenders of international courts that protect economic rights.

The second trend is the recognition of the growing place of the individual in the new order. In this way, the individual is both a holder of rights that can be enforced against the state that is said to have done wrong — the Masri case — and obligated to avoid international crimes. A century ago this was unthinkable; only in the last decade does it approach normality.

As recently as the 1930s, sovereignty was seen as being nigh on absolute: sovereignty meant a state could do pretty much whatever it wanted to its nationals, including torturing and killing them on a mass scale. The post-Second World War settlement changed that: sovereignty was seen as limited, not absolute, as individuals got rights and international bodies protected those rights. — The Guardian, London