Spaces and Places of International Criminal Justice

2019 ◽  
pp. 38-67
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Global City ◽  
The Internet ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
The North ◽  
The Hague

The chapter draws on spatial sociologists to critically map out ‘where’ international criminal justice takes place, and how it is shaped by a multiplicity of scales, geographies, and sites. First, the chapter focuses on how international criminal justice is visibly and materially located, recognizing The Hague as a hub in the global networks of global justice-making—a ‘global city’ of justice-making. Yet, it is related to and dependent on other spaces, such as those where the crimes were committed. Uganda is one of these sites. There however, ‘justice’ is almost invisible and, from a view from The Hague, at a standstill. The disconnect between the metropole and periphery of global justice-making is also apparent in the virtual spaces of international criminal justice, as the chapter moves on to identify and discuss social media as a crucial space of global justice-making. While the internet is a major ground for debate, international criminal justice is promoted and legitimized globally through social media. Delinked from the nation state, the chapter suggests that social media is but one strategy of building constituency for international criminal justice. Another is the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) meetings that work as an annual ritual of international criminal justice invoking cosmopolitan images and justifications, yet in a space of increasing political friction. The chapter’s spatial analysis teases out the north-south and the metropole/periphery divide in international criminal justice, while situating the transnational networks of NGOs as part of its geography of power.

From Moral Entrepreneurs to Moral Advocates

2019 ◽  
pp. 98-124
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment ◽  
Moral Entrepreneurs

A sociology of punishment for international criminal justice enables attention to the norms, morals, and values at play in the motivational dynamics of penal reforms. At the same time, these cultural forces must be analysed against the background of social organization and structure, indeed, as to what enables people to think and feel in certain ways and to promote policies in accordance with their sensibilities. As such, this chapter explores international criminal justice as a field replete with cosmopolitan sensibilities, but also of lifestyles, qualifications, and restraints. Finding that international criminal justice is perceived as a cosmopolitan expression of social justice, the first part conceptualizes human rights NGOs working in international criminal justice as global moral entrepreneurs and shows how they use humanist discourses to promote global justice-making through law, turning them into advocates of international criminal justice. Balancing claims to authority in the field, the NGOs have to navigate between being ‘insiders’ as experts and ‘outsiders’ that can claim moral authority. The analysis draws on scholarship inspired by Bourdieu and is put to work on transnational fields, enabling attention to what is often downplayed in studies of international law, namely class. As such, the chapter inquires into whose imaginations of global justice become part of its materiality, finding that advocates of humanity predominantly belong to a class of transnational western professionals.

Africa Against Global Justice? Stakes for Building a Political Sociology on the Future of International Criminal Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-230
Author(s):  
Sara Dezalay
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Weak Field ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
African Continent ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Over Time

This chapter challenges current debates in global justice and the fight against impunity. Shifting the lens from the symbolism of global justice towards the structural conditions that have shaped international criminal justice as a field over time can help reposition the Habré success story not simply as an anomaly in a context of wider backlash against the International Criminal Court (ICC), but rather as a reflection of the structure of global justice as a weak field. The chapter then discusses the need to study systematically the evolution of legal markets on the African continent. In this, the project to institute a criminal chamber within the African Court of Justice and Human Rights has perhaps been too promptly dismissed as overly ambitious due to the lack of resources and state support within the African Union (AU). Interestingly, this project includes not only the crimes under the purview of the ICC, but also various other trans-border crimes such as trafficking, corruption, and the illicit exploitation of resources. The prominence taken in recent years by Africa as a new ‘mining frontier’—and with it, as a new haven for US and UK multinational corporate firms—underscores the timeliness of opening research paths on these ongoing transformations across the continent.

Appeal may reject UN tribunal's Yugoslav acquittal

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Prison Sentence ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Hague

Significance The verdict runs counter to 20 years of jurisprudence and history at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It undermines the idea of using international criminal justice to assist in post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. It has caused disbelief, disappointment and anger in Croatia and Bosnia, especially among victims, and generated political instability in Serbia. Impacts The controversial judgment will further discredit the ICTY and the very idea of international criminal justice in the eyes of critics. It followed Karadzic's 40-year prison sentence, which has dismayed victims and observers expecting a harsher sentence. Despite working towards closure in 2017, the ICTY is very likely to grant an appeal. However, Seselj himself is unlikely to reappear in The Hague voluntarily.

International Courts and Tribunals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Findlay
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Positive Development ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Formal Institutions ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Political Interference

Despite political interference and jurisdictional partiality, the formal institutions of international criminal justice are positive development for global governance in their existence alone. The unique aims for global justice enunciated in the Preamble to the Rome Statute are a manifesto for how humanity expects to be protected from atrocity, and where responsibility should lie. As the example of rape in war demonstrates, translating these noble aspirations into trial practice and justice outcomes is often sullied by discriminatory externalities common in domestic criminal justice and exacerbated as the degree of victimization escalates. The lasting measure of the courts and tribunals is not successful prosecutions but rather the satisfaction of legitimate victim interests.

‘Kony is so last month’ – lessons from social media stunt ‘Kony 2012’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regina E. Rauxloh
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
The Internet ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Public Beliefs ◽  
Online Activism

This chapter explores the role of social media in the creation of myths and public beliefs about justice and law. Using the case study of the YouTube clip Kony 2012 the author identifies a number of myths and public beliefs this video creates and sustains, looking at three principal myths, namely the myths regarding the background and facts of the armed conflict and the current situation in Uganda, the myths regarding possible military and legal solutions and last but not least the myth surrounding the effectiveness of online activism itself. Rauxloh argues that the portrayal of a very long and complex conflict as simply a war of good versus evil and the presented solution of the “mighty West” helping the “helpless Africa” perpetuates dangerous stereotypes which are in direct contradiction to the aims of international criminal justice in general and the International Criminal Court in particular. It is also argued that one of the most damaging myths is the notion of the internet as the freely accessible democratic forum which opens up the power of voice to everybody. Rauxloh warns that social media have an unprecedented potential for creating, spreading and perpetuating myths and public beliefs.

Penal Imaginations of Global Justice-Making

2019 ◽  
pp. 125-154
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment ◽  
The Relationship

The chapter analyses the cosmopolitan penal imaginary building on western domestic penality, delving into the relationship between human rights sensibilities and criminal justice mentalities in the ‘fight against impunity’. Through the fieldwork in Uganda and Rwanda, the chapter describes asymmetries between the international and national criminal justice systems. It shows how international criminal justice circulates transnationally between different geographical sites via human rights NGOs and is closely linked to human rights expertise, and how human rights NGOs turn international criminal justice into issues about social justice. Applying a sociology of punishment perspective, the chapter brings out the similarities and differences in ‘penal imaginations’ between domestic and international criminal justice, and argues that international criminal justice both echoes the national and departs from it. For example, while international criminal justice relies upon retributive and expressive undertones, it makes no appeal to punitive sensibilities: a fact that can be understood in light of the close relation between international criminal justice and human rights NGOs. Yet, it is argued that human rights NGOs rely too strongly on punitive answers, and that amnesties can be just a matter of pragmatism in situations of profound violence. Thus, while the ICC has both retributive and reparative aims, the situation in northern Uganda demonstrates how international criminal justice became an impediment to peace. Moreover, the chapter reveals how a lot of practical issues had simply not been ‘thought of’ when setting up the ICC, such as acquittals and asylum-seeking witnesses.

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