Negative Aesthetic Experiences of Prosecuting the Barely Alive

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Shannon Fyfe
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Oral Evidence

Abstract Theories of negative aesthetics claim that some aesthetic qualities like disgust, ugliness, and repulsiveness are instrumentally valuable, and can be justified as a necessary means to producing what might be considered an ultimately positive aesthetic experience. In an international criminal trial, the presentation of “ugly” visual and oral evidence may be justified in service of the aims of the trial. But when the “barely alive” are prosecuted, however, a justification for a negative aesthetic experience may not exist. In this paper, I argue that due to their vulnerability and the need to protect their dignity, individuals who have been accused of mass atrocity crimes but who are nearing the end of their lives should generally not be subjected to public trial and punishment. The negative aesthetic experiences generated by displaying someone close to death in that setting cannot be justified by positive aesthetic or moral experiences.

Responsibility to Protect in International Criminal Law

Postgenocide ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 112-134
Author(s):  
Jobair Alam
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Normative Foundations

This chapter considers the worst contemporary state-led prosecution of a minority group, which amounts to genocide, namely the Rohingya. It examines the atrocity crimes committed against them under international criminal law (ICL) and the application of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) thereupon. It suggests that such atrocities are constitutive of violations of jus cogens which warrants obligatio erga omnes. Accordingly, the perpetrators can be brought to justice under inter/national and universal jurisdictions, which, nonetheless, has not yet occurred. Given the failure of ICL mechanisms, the normative foundations of the R2P can provide valuable tools for intercepting mass atrocity crimes. The Rohingya—who face direct and structural violence at the hands of the Myanmar state—need protection from these crimes. The chapter explains how insular national politics can undo the gains made by the international community in upholding the distinctiveness of humanitarian claims through the application of the R2P.

s.V Modalities, Ch.21 From Machinery to Motivation: The Lost Legacy of Criminal Organizations Liability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Saira
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
Military Tribunal ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Missed Opportunity

This chapter considers the lost legacy of the concept of criminal organizations in international criminal law. When the notion of declaring the criminality of organizations, in addition to determining the guilt of individuals, was first proposed in anticipation of the trial before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, organizational criminality was viewed as an opportunity both to recognize the role of organizations in nurturing mass criminality and to facilitate the prosecution of masses of individuals. But by the time the Tribunal was in operation, the first of these goals had faded away, and organizational criminality represented nothing more than a tool to accomplish individual criminality. This chapter argues that treating criminal organizations as a means to secure individual criminal liability represents a loss, a missed opportunity, in international criminal law. The condemnation of organizations that can attend organizational liability could have created within international criminal law an opportunity to expose the role of organizations in the perpetration of mass atrocity, to call attention to and analyze the institutionalized nature of mass atrocity crimes, which makes these crimes not only unthinkably destructive, but also inherently and importantly distinct from criminal wrongdoing in which a person’s conduct diverges from the standards of most of society. The missed opportunity of abandoning criminal organizations liability is particularly acute, this chapter contends, in light of the research in the decades since Nuremberg establishing how organizations affect individual behaviour. With greater understanding about the mechanisms for individuals’ desire to conform with peers, to obey authorities, and to rationalize their own actions, we can now see that organizations contribute to individuals’ decisions to commit crimes by providing forums and creating environments in which individuals come to believe that criminal behaviour is necessary or normal or even good, or in which individuals fail to recognize their own part in a criminal system. The organizations thus provide not only the machinery for atrocity, but also the motivation. By abandoning the substantive core of criminal organizations, international criminal law fails to identify the foundational role of organizations in creating mass atrocity crimes.

scholarly journals The Future of the International Criminal Court. On Critique, Legalism and Strengthening the icc’s Legitimacy

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke de Hoon
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

While the International Criminal Court (icc) strives for justice for atrocity crimes throughout the world, increasingly, its legitimacy is undermined: powerful states refuse to join, African states prepare to leave, victims do not feel their needs for justice are met. This article argues that this is due to contradicting assumptions and too many objectives attached to the expectations of international criminal justice, which pull and push what the criminal trial is supposed to do in too many directions, undermining what it can do, raising too high expectations, and leading to disappointment. The article analyses the critique as rooted in a misunderstanding of what ‘justice’ is, what a criminal trial can do, and how inherently political international criminal justice is and only can be. It concludes with some observations on what this entails for strengthening the legitimacy of the icc by matching expectations to what it can and cannot do.

scholarly journals African resistance to the International Criminal Court: Halting the advance of the anti-impunity norm

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Mills ◽  
Alan Bloomfield
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
African Union ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

AbstractThe creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 marked a substantial advance in the effort to ensure all perpetrators of mass atrocities can be brought to justice. Yet significant resistance to the anti-impunity norm, and the ICC as the implementing institution, has arisen in Africa. The ICC has primarily operated in Africa, and since it sought to indict the sitting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2008 resistance from both individual African states and the African Union has increased substantially. We draw on the concept of ‘norm antipreneurs’, and the broader norm dynamics literature, to analyse how resistance has developed and manifested itself, as well as the potential effects of this resistance on the anti-impunity norm. We conclude that the antipreneur concept helped us structure and organise analysis of the case – suggesting it could be usefully deployed in other similar cases – but that this case also suggests that antipreneurs do not always enjoy substantial defensive advantages. We also conclude that African resistance to the ICC has substantially stalled the advance of the anti-impunity norm, a finding that has significant implications for the wider effort to reduce mass atrocity crimes in the contemporary era.

Questions about Aesthetic Experience

Projections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-75
Author(s):  
Paisley Livingston
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Third Culture ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
The Third

These brief comments raise some questions about Murray Smith’s remarks, in his new volume Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film, on the nature of aesthetic experience. My questions concern how we might best draw a viable distinction between aesthetic and non-aesthetic experiences and focus in particular on possible links between self-awareness and aesthetic experiences. In sum, I agree with Smith in holding that we should not give up on the notion of aesthetic experience, even though aestheticians continue to disagree regarding even the most basic questions pertaining to its nature.

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