Special Tribunal for Lebanon and progressive development of international criminal law

The subject. The article analyses the practice of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and its Judgement of 18 August 2020, rendered against those found guilty of a terrorist act and the impact on the progressive development of international criminal law.The purpose. This article seeks to define what goal the international community pursued in establishing the Special Tribunal for Lebanon from the perspective of international security law, international criminal justice, and counter-terrorism cooperation. The legal nature of the terrorist attack of 14 October 2005 is essential in this regard: is the crime is comparable in its gravity and consequences to the crimes of genocide or war crimes in the territory of the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda, which predetermined the subsequent establishment of ad hoc international criminal tribunals? Further, was the establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon an attempt to make the crimes of terrorism an international crime in practice? Finally, was the establishment of the Tribunal an attempt to lay the groundwork for a new type of international judicial bodies with jurisdiction over crimes of terrorism? The methodology. The authors use such general theoretical and specific scientific methods as comparative analysis, generalization, interpretation and classification as well as systemic analysis and formal logical methods.The main results. The legal qualification and analysis of the circumstances of the terrorist attack do not enable the conclusion that the bomb explosion in Beirut was comparable in danger and consequences to any international crimes or was a threat to international peace and security. In its turn, the involvement of the Security Council in the establishment of the Tribunal does not unequivocally evidence its alleged attempt to create a purely international criminal structure.The choice of applicable law granted to Lebanon and the fact that the crime committed solely affected the interests of that State would qualify the Tribunal as an internationalized judicial body, whose work would focus on defining the crime of terrorism through a broader lens of interpreting national legislation. In other words, the impetus for development has been given not to international but national criminal law.The Tribunal was created neither to progressively develop international criminal law with regard to defining terrorism as an international crime nor to advance the international criminal justice system. Rather, it was an attempt to address Lebanon’s specific political and legal challenges.Conclusions. The outcome of the Tribunal’s work could have a rather negative impact on the development of international criminal law, discrediting the very idea of enabling “peace through justice” and uniform, consistent application and interpretation of international criminal law.

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

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.

The ‘Grotian Style’ in International Criminal Justice

This article envisages how one might conceptualize the ‘Grotian Style’ in international criminal justice as a practice of adaptation spearheaded by international judges rather than as actual changes occurring in the international system. It foregrounds the emblematic career of Antonio Cassese at the ICTY as epitomizing the trajectory of a scholar on the bench intent on seizing a historic opportunity to reframe the law. The contours, origins, and prospects but also limitations of the ‘Grotian style’ are then discussed. The problem with the Grotian style is not primarily that it runs roughshod over defense rights, but that it appropriates a law-making authority which, in the international system, is better understood as primarily vested in states. In the process, it risks exposing its hubris and shallowness, especially when deciding on normatively intractable issues. In a context where international criminal justice is increasingly being normalized, the time may have come to reconceptualize judges’ role along more global constitutional lines as rooted in an ongoing dialogue with the international community of states and an emerging separation of powers.

Legal Mobilization and the Internationalization of Anticorruption Enforcement

This article contributes a critical study of efforts to internationalize the investigation and prosecution of corruption. The efforts to internationalize anticorruption enforcement are visible, for instance, in calls for an International Anticorruption Court (IACC) or an Anticorruption Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (APUNCAC). Inspired by a historical sociological perspective, this article investigates mobilizations around these initiatives, how mobilizers frame their engagement, and the ideological context in which they operate. In particular, the article zooms in on elites and how they push for states to internationalize the investigation and prosecution of corruption. This article situates the efforts of these elites in a larger historical context and compares the push to internationalize anticorruption enforcement to earlier legal mobilizations in the field of international criminal justice focused on atrocity crimes.

“Complete Labelling” and Domestic Prosecutions for Crimes Against Humanity

Fair labelling is an established principle of criminal justice that scrutinises the way that States use language in labelling criminal defendants and their conduct. I argue that “complete labelling” is a related but separate principle which has not received any explicit attention from commentators. Whereas fair labelling focuses, usually, on the protection of defendant’s rights, the principle of complete labelling explains and justifies whether the labels attached appropriately represent the nature and scale of the wrong done to the community. As a case study, I apply this lens in the context of regional (U.S./Mexican) criminal justice responses to crimes against humanity perpetrated by “drug-cartels” in the context of the Mexican Drug War. Successive administrations in Mexico and the U.S. have tended to charge cartel leaders (and/or their political supporters) with so-called “transnational crimes” (for example, drug-trafficking, money-laundering, bribery/corruption). This is despite the fact that many of the most powerful cartels have controlled territory, attacked entire towns, carried out acts of terror, and disappeared thousands of people. The principle of complete labelling is useful in normative terms because it helps in the critical examination of a State’s prosecutorial practices, exposing problems that might otherwise be missed. In relation to the case study discussed, for example, a focus on complete labelling helps to expose the regional prosecutorial policy as either an unjustified exercise in selectivity or, at worst, an expression of collective denial. After considering certain counteracting reflexions which speak to some of the foundational anxieties of international criminal justice, the article concludes that domestic prosecutions for crimes against humanity in the context of drug-cartels may, sometimes, be justified.