The field of international criminal law operates on multiple overlapping registers, including the ideological, the economic and the political. As part of a symposium exploring the claim that ...international criminal law constitutes a form of 'global justice', this article takes up the relationship between the political interests and material conditions of possibility that inform and sustain the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC). As the field's sole permanent institution, the ICC relies upon annual funding from its member states, producing a shareholder economy that draws upon managerial logics and reflects the interests of its constituency. This article considers the implications of regarding states as 'shareholders' of global justice, as well as the effects of the ICC's ethos of austerity at the level of practice. It argues that international criminal law risks diminishing its value as a public good through turning to the logics of the private realm.
In his black robes in the clinical space of the courtroom of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a member of the prosecution team presented his audience with a new optic for viewing the terrain ...of international criminality. Combining geospatial information, satellite imagery, photographs, open source videos, and other forms of site documentation, this 'interactive digital platform' offered its viewers a composition of materials in order to demonstrate the responsibility of the accused, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, for the destruction of cultural heritage in Timbuktu, Mali in 2012.1his was the first time that such a medium had been used at the Hague-based court. 'Geospatial technology' refers to technologies that acquire, manipulate, and store geographic information. This article addresses the making of evidence as a legal matter through digital forms that are increasingly employed in human rights and international criminal litigation.
Pour qu’un héritage soit réellement grand, il faut que la main du défunt ne se voie pas.
In 2014, a year of memorial ceremonies commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, the ...International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) marked its own twentieth year with the launch of a “legacy website.” With the closing of the Tribunal scheduled for December 2015, the question of its legacy had become increasingly pressing. The website premiered a video that “celebrates the accomplishments of the ICTR” in a “visually compelling” style. Blurring the distinction between documentary account and film trailer, the video begins with iconic images of the African continent: a boy rolling a hoop down a dirt road; laborers ferrying wares; women in colorful dresses tending children. These scenes of daily life are interrupted by images of men wielding machetes and corpses, interspersed with the figure of the radio, reminding the viewer that the 1994 genocide was encouraged through broadcasts inciting Hutus to take up arms against their Tutsi neighbors. The video lists the Tribunal’s contributions to international criminal law, but also describes a much broader impact: “a record of legal reform in Rwanda, and outreach, education, legal training, and healing.” Young boys leap into a body of water to punctuate the final term, suggesting the hope of a new Rwanda. The narrator proclaims, “today in Rwanda, it’s safe to listen to the radio again: the sound is of a nation rebuilding.” The film’s final words reach beyond the Rwandan context, affirming that ours is “a world pushing forward despite great imperfection, each day closer to a time when international law offers justice to all people, everywhere.”
Review(s) of: The nuremberg military tribunals and the origins of international criminal law, by Kevin Jon Heller (Oxford, UK, Oxford University press, 2011) 509 pages. Price us$135.00 (Hardback) ...ISBN 9780199554317; Beyond Victor's justice?: The Tokyo war crimes trial revisited, edited by Yuki Tanaka, Tim Mccormack and Gerry Simpson (Leiden, Netherlands, Martinus Nijhoff, 2011) 402 pages, price US$192.00 (hardback) ISBN 9789004203037.
Since the end of the Second World War, the global order has witnessed tremendous change. Social, behavioural, and economic changes have been shaped in large part by a post-war ideology that presumed ...scalable inventions could make human life extend further, act faster, and work cheaper. Technological developments have continued to shape the global order on multiple registers, including in the realm of armed conflict. With the evolution of proxy warfare during and after the Cold War (and the resulting war-weariness among the populations of the Great Powers), the capacity for states to exercise their influence, both remotely and diffusely, has been driving the global military research agenda. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of the Internet, the development of cybernetics/artificial intelligence, and the creation of new genetic and programmable materials as well as laser weaponry. This century such technologies have evolved to produce the likes of drones, the emerging category of lethal autonomous weapons or 'LAWs', and other military land-based autonomous and semi-autonomous robots. All of these developments have occurred against the backdrop of a radically uneven global order, intensifying divisions between regions, states, peoples, and groups, and entrenching existing inequalities, both transnationally and within states.
The production of states is often regarded as matter of power: of drawing together political elites, proxies for external interests, and sentiments that tap into what is figured as the "popular ...will." In a more critical vein, the production of states is read in relation to postcolonial inheritances that continue to haunt contemporary state structures. Statebuilding technologies have evolved into technocratic exercises in ensuring that rights are protected, internal forms of state power are separated and subjected to checks and balances, and principles of fairness and constraint are enshrined in legislation. Many of these objectives appear as legal problems to be addressed through the drafting of a written constitution, an emblem of modern political statehood. Yet these projects appear to be increasingly delegated to technocratic "experts" who are thought to have harnessed the formulae for producing viable states. Constitutional production has expanded beyond a process of political deliberation into an industry of expert knowledge. The rise of expert knowledge in constitutional matters marks a turn toward "constitutional technicity," where constitution drafting is regarded as a domain of technical expertise inhabited by neutral and politically divested actors.1 This essay considers the emergence of the constitution drafting manual or handbook in the post-Cold War period as a genre in which technical expertise seeks to confront and regulate the political. Produced by and circulated within a diverse network of actors, these documents consolidate a view of what constitutes "best practice" in the production of contemporary state identity. Yet, in claiming that they merely reflect what they present as an existing consensus of state construction, these manuals also act into the field of state-building, naturalizing particular understandings of the ontology of the state that reflect liberal legalist norms. This essay takes up and interrogates these texts to consider their underlying presumptions, revealing the active role of textual practices in the production of contemporary state forms. The provision of information is not only a matter of recording and presenting an account of what exists, but also a way of acting into the world through forms of inscription.2 The state is increasingly inscribed not only through the constitution itself, but also by what precedes its emergence: expert consultations; trainings in legislative drafting; and the content of constitution-drafting reports, manuals, and handbooks that influence the texts of state constitutions. In this sense, the constitution- drafting manual forms part of a broader dispositif, an assemblage of multiple elements such as "discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions" and the "system of relations" between elements that enable the tracing of power beyond its most apparent locations.3 It has become a familiar feature of the more avowedly political practice of constitution drafting: a technocratic accompaniment that seeks to shape and inform the discursive terrain on which terms and phrases are translated into foundational legal authority.
Representation is one of the most ingrained practices at the International Criminal Court. This article focuses on a more novel practice of representation in international criminal law: the practice ...of speaking, directly or indirectly, for victims of international crimes. Adapted from the source document.
Before the 2015 annual meeting of the European Society of International Law, participants were notified of a ‘women in international law’ happy hour for exchanging ideas on ‘the improvement of ...representation of women’. At the convivial and well-attended event in Oslo, organizers thanked the men who were present, remarking that their support was not only welcomed but also necessary. This theme of inclusion resurfaced in side conversations about past conference panels on gender that noted the supportive role of senior male academics in audiences comprised primarily of women. Gender was mainly discussed along a single axis of male/female rather than intersectionally. Other categories of identity, such as ethnicity and nationality, remained on the sidelines of this event, which focused on the role of women within the field.
In the decades following the end of the Cold War, the process of producing state constitutions has transformed into a veritable industry. This commentary considers contemporary practices of ...constitution-making as a site for critical reflection. It takes up the provision of “expert” advice in constitution-making processes in relation to three tropes of how these processes are conceived. As an attempt at diagnosing the constitution-making present, this commentary focuses on constitutional “technicity,” though aspects of what I term constitutional “romanticism” and “civility” continue to inform this technical turn.
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