The Politics Of Constructing The International Criminal Court

This book examines the political process that led to the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002. It accounts for the main features of the court, including its strong, independent prosecutor, by analyzing the discourse surrounding the ICC negotiations, and particularly highlights the role of human rights NGOs.

This book theorizes how weaker states in the international system use the ICC to advance their security and political interests.

Ten years ago, in the wake of massive crimes in central Africa and the Balkans, the first permanent international criminal court was established in The Hague despite resistance from some of the world's most powerful states. In the past decade, the court has grown from a few staff in an empty building to a bustling institution with more than a thousand lawyers, investigators, and administrators from around the world. Despite its growth and the backing of more than 120 nations, the ICC is still struggling to assert itself in often turbulent political crises. The ICC is generally autonomous in its ability to select cases and investigate crimes, but it is ultimately dependent on sovereign states, and particularly on the world's leading powers. These states can provide the diplomatic, economic, and military clout the court often needs to get cooperation-and to arrest suspects. But states don't expend precious political capital lightly, and the court has often struggled to get the help it needs. When their interests are most affected, moreover, powerful states usually want the court to keep its distance. Directly and indirectly, they make their preferences known in The Hague. Rough Justice grapples with the court's basic dilemma: designed to be apolitical, it requires the support of politicians who pursue national interests and answer to domestic audiences. Through a sharp analysis of the dynamics at work behind the scenes, Bosco assesses the ways in which powerful states have shaped the court's effort to transform the vision of international justice into reality. This will be the definitive account of the Court and its uneven progress toward advancing accountability around the world.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first and only standing international court capable of prosecuting humanity's worst crimes: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It faces huge obstacles. It has no police force; it pursues investigations in areas of tremendous turmoil, conflict, and death; it is charged both with trying suspects and with aiding their victims; and it seeks to combine divergent legal traditions in an entirely new international legal mechanism. International law advocates sought to establish a standing international criminal court for more than 150 years. Other, temporary, single-purpose criminal tribunals, truth commissions, and special courts have come and gone, but the ICC is the only permanent inheritor of the Nuremberg legacy. In Building the International Criminal Court, Oberlin College Professor of Politics Ben Schiff analyzes the International Criminal Court, melding historical perspective, international relations theories, and observers' insights to explain the Court's origins, creation, innovations, dynamics, and operational challenges.

The establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in July 1998 has attracted growing interest in the evolving role of politics in international law. Steven C. Roach's innovative and systematic work on the political and ethical dimensions of the ICC is the first comprehensive attempt to situate the politics of the ICC both theoretically and practically. Linking the ICC's internal politicization with its formative development, Roach provides a unique understanding of this institution's capacity to play a constructive role in global politics. He argues that an internal form of politicization will allow the ICC to counter outside efforts to politicize it, whether this involves the political agenda of a state hegemon or the geopolitical interests of U. N. Security Council permanent members. Steering a new path between conventional approaches that stress the formal link between legitimacy and legal neutrality, and unconventional approaches that treat legitimacy and politics as inextricable elements of a repressive international legal order, Roach formulates the concept of political legalism, which calls for a self-directed and engaged application of the legal rules and principles of the ICC Statute. Politicizing the International Criminal Court is a must-read for scholars, students, and policymakers interested in the dynamics of this important international institution.

On August 21, 2013, chemical weapons were unleashed on the civilian population in Syria, killing another 1,400 people in a civil war that had already claimed the lives of more than 140,000. As is all too often the case, the innocent found themselves victims of a violent struggle for political power. Such events are why human rights activists have long pressed for institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute some of the world’s most severe crimes: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. While proponents extol the creation of the ICC as a transformative victory for principles of international humanitarian law, critics have often characterized it as either irrelevant or dangerous in a world dominated by power politics. Christopher Rudolph argues in Power and Principle that both perspectives are extreme. In contrast to prevailing scholarship, he shows how the interplay between power politics and international humanitarian law have shaped the institutional development of international criminal courts from Nuremberg to the ICC. Rudolph identifies the factors that drove the creation of international criminal courts, explains the politics behind their institutional design, and investigates the behavior of the ICC. Through the development and empirical testing of several theoretical frameworks, Power and Principle helps us better understand the factors that resulted in the emergence of international criminal courts and helps us determine the broader implications of their presence in society.

The idea of an International Criminal Court has captured the international legal imagination for over a century. In 1998 it became a reality with the adoption of the Rome Statute. This book critically examines the fundamental legal and policy issues involved in the establishment and functioning of the Permanent International Criminal Court. Detailed consideration is given to the history of war crimes trials and their place in the system of international law,the legal and political significance of a permanent ICC, the legality and legitimacy of war crimes trials, the tensions and conflicts involved in negotiating the ICC Statute, the general principles of legality, the scope of defences, evidential dilemmas, the perspective of victims, the nature and scope of the offences within the ICC's jurisdiction – aggression, genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, questions of admissibility and theories of jurisdiction, the principle of complementarity, national implementation of the Statute in a range of jurisdictions, and national and international responses to the ICC. The expert contributors are drawn from a range of national jurisdictions – UK, Sweden, Canada, and Australia. The book blends detailed legal analysis with practical and policy perspectives and offers an authoritative complement to the extensive commentaries on the ICC Statute.