scholarly journals Shifting Accounts of Justice: The Legalisation and Politicisation of International Criminal Justice

2021 ◽  
pp. 096466392110588
Author(s):  
Henry Redwood ◽  
Hannah Goozee
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Weak Form ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Field Analysis ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Final Verdict

In December 2015, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda delivered its final verdict in Butare, bringing the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to a close after 21-years. Despite the important role that the tribunal played in confirming international criminal justice as a key transitional justice mechanism, and tool of international peace and security, there has been little retrospective analysis of the court’s history. This article draws on a Bourdieusian field analysis to address the absence and makes two contributions. First, it demonstrates that over the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s history the tribunal’s conception of justice shifted from a weak form of restorative justice to a more traditional form of retributive justice. Second, it reveals that this shift was the result of a ‘settling’ on the law and, more importantly, UN Security Council interventions. This legalisation and politicisation of trial practice saw a shift in the field from prioritising moral authority to legal and delegated authority.

“I Would Do the Same Again”

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivera Simić
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
International Tribunal ◽  
Return Home

After more than 20 years in operation, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has closed down at the end of 2017. Biljana Plavšić made history by becoming the only woman, of 161 individuals, indicted by the ICTY. She was also the highest ranking official and the first Serb leader to plead guilty to charges raised against her before the ICTY. After entering into a plea agreement and serving two thirds of her 11-year sentence in Sweden, she returned to Belgrade in 2009 where she has been living ever since. In this article, I draw on interviews I undertook with Plavšić in the course of 2017. In the first part of the article, I briefly introduce Plavšić and situate the study within the field of international criminal justice and transitional justice. I then proceed to discuss four themes that Plavšić most frequently returned to during our conversations. These themes offer an original perspective into Plavšić’s experience of being tried and sentenced by the international tribunal and her subsequent release and return home. This article aims to fill a gap in the literature by analyzing the reflections on the ICTY from its only woman defendant.

Individuals Accused of International Crimes as Delegitimized Agents of Truth

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 291-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mina Rauschenbach
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Concept Of Truth ◽  
International Criminal Trials

The workings of international criminal trials situate themselves in an era where the concept of truth is heralded as a key aspect in the production of understandings of the past within transitional justice (TJ) settings. Yet, in such contexts where representations of the past are multilayered, trials tend to put to the fore certain narratives as legitimate readings, while excluding many others. This article explores the discourses of 18 individuals accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It focuses on their role as generally delegitimized agents of truth and analyzes how they reconstruct their justice experience, focusing particularly on how they make sense of the judicial truths stemming from their case. It reveals how they reconstruct the ICTY as a hegemonic arena which produces judicial truths, which cannot be considered as legitimate and complete accounts of the past and which are at odds with their authoritative perspective of the “truth.” These findings are analyzed against the backdrop of increasing scholarly debates about the legitimacy, which can be attributed to perpetrators’ perspectives given the tendency, within TJ discourses and practices, to position international criminal justice as a universal and authoritative arbitrator of morality in conflict.

The Trial of the Kaiser

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Schabas
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The First World War ◽  
International Morality ◽  
First Time ◽  
First World

Today’s elaborate system of international criminal justice originates in proposals at the end of the First World War to try Kaiser Wilhelm II before an international criminal tribunal. In the weeks following 11 November 1918, the British, French, and Italian Governments agreed on a trial. Lloyd George campaigned for re-election on the slogan ‘Hang the Kaiser’. The Kaiser had fled to the Netherlands, possibly after receiving signals from the Dutch Queen that he would be welcome. Renegade US soldiers led by a former Senator failed in a bizarre attempt to take him prisoner and bring him to Paris. During the Peace Conference, the Commission on Responsibilities brought international lawyers together for the first time to debate international criminal justice. They recommended trial of the Kaiser by an international tribunal for war crimes, but not for starting the war or violating Belgian neutrality. The Americans were opposed to any prosecution. However, President Wilson changed his mind and agreed to trial for a ‘supreme offence against international morality’. This became a clause in the Treaty of Versailles, one of the few that the Germans tried to resist. Although the Allies threatened a range of measures if the former Emperor was not surrendered, the Dutch refused and the demands were dropped in March 1920. The Kaiser lived out his life in a castle near Utrecht, dying of natural causes in June 1941. Hitler sent a wreath to the funeral.

Victimological Imaginations

2019 ◽  
pp. 155-185
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Global North ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

The figure of the victim is the sine qua non of the fight against impunity for international crimes. Engaging the victimological imagination of international criminal justice, the chapter shows how victims are represented, and how justice for victims is imagined. The first part focuses on imaginations of ‘justice for victims’, and argues that the ICC represents a form of hybrid justice by incorporating ‘restorative’ and ‘transformative’ rationales for justice. Unlike ordinary courts, the ICC incorporates what can be thought of as both ‘punitive’ and ‘reparative’ arms. Part of the latter is the Rome Statute’s provisions for victims’ rights to participation and reparation. However, a closer look at the implementation of these processes reveal a conspicuous discrepancy between ideologies and realities. The second part of the chapter situates victims as a source of moral authority, and one that is claimed in representational practices by both human rights NGOs and international criminal justice generally. The chapter explores suffering as a type of ‘currency’, both on an individual level for victims’ advocates, as their source of ‘purpose’, and on a broader cultural level as the source of ‘global’ moral outcry. The chapter demonstrates how the victim is culturally represented through imaginations from the global North and becomes universalized as a symbol of humanity, of which the gendered and racialized victim of sexual and gender-based violence provides particularly powerful victim imagery. In this way, the image of the victim of international crimes is characterized by her essential ‘otherness’: it is humanity that suffers.

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.

The ICTY is Dead! Long Live the ICTY!

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-82
Author(s):  
Carsten Stahn
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Institutional Culture ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

The chapter sets the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) legacies into a broader context of international criminal justice. It presents different approaches towards the many legacies of the ICTY. The chapter engages with the several phases that the Tribunal has passed, discussing their positive and negative points. It then examines the normative legacy of the ICTY, arguing that, although some gaps exist, the overall record of the ICTY is marked with several normative innovations. The chapter then visits the procedural legacy of the ICTY, in the sense of how the Tribunal made justice heard and seen. Lastly, the chapter discusses the institutional culture of the ICTY and its legacy to other international criminal tribunals. With this analysis, the chapter claims that the ICTY legacies are living beings, which will continue to be transformed throughout the history of international criminal justice.

scholarly journals Penal welfarism ‘gone global’? Comparing international criminal justice to The Culture of Control

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-23
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Global Dimension ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
National Capacity ◽  
Penal Sanctions ◽  
Justice Studies ◽  
Late Modern

With the consolidation of a cosmopolitan field of international criminal justice, penality has ‘gone global’. In spite of the abundance of doctrinal legal analysis, human rights studies, and transitional justice studies, there are few analytic attempts to engage with the working assumptions, cultural commitments, and dominant mentalities that give shape to international criminal justice as a penal field. Based on ethnographic observations, interviews with key actors, and critical reading of international criminal justice scholarship, this article compares the cosmopolitan penality of international criminal justice to that of late modern, domestic, penality. Using David Garland’s The Culture of Control as an analytic yardstick, it argues that international criminal justice both resembles and departs from ‘the national’. For example, whilst the cosmopolitan penality relies upon retributive justifications, it makes no appeal to harsh penal sanctions; nor is it concerned with the rehabilitation of prisoners. Rather, it is an expressive and humanitarian form of justice where the victim takes central stage – as the embodiment of a suffering humanity. Moreover, there is a remarkable faith in the transformative effects of international criminal justice, resembling a form of penal welfarism ‘gone global’. As national capacity building and penal development has become intrinsic to the project of international criminal justice, the article shows how the global dimension of the power to punish is based on a moralization of politics.

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