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Abstract:
It has been argued that international law has recently "come of age", that it is a fully-fledged legal system like any other. It has also been argued that in order for a normative system to qualify as "law" it must, at the least, claim to possess legitimate authority and to be supreme to other normative systems. This article examines one highly visible development in international law - the criminal war trials - from a sociological perspective, trying to discern whether and how international law claims legitimate authority and supremacy. Specifically, it focuses on a deeply symbolic example of international criminal adjudication: the Milosevic trial. The article offers a sociological reading of the symbolism of the interpersonal dynamics of the Milosevic trial and concludes that what is in fact attempted, and perhaps achieved, through internationalizing the transitional-justice trials is the internationalization of the transition process itself. The subject of the transition from an illiberal and illegitimate regime to a liberal and legitimate one is not in fact the former-Yugoslavia, but the 'international community' itself. The rule of law that the ICTY seeks to vindicate is not only law as such, and not necessarily the law of the former-Yugoslavia, but the rule of international law.

Milosevic, ICTY, international law, authority, legitimacy dramaturgy, war crimes, transitional justice

Abstract:
The international criminal courts (ICCs) - the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals for the Former-Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, the recently-established permanent International Criminal Court, and hybrid internationalized tribunals such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone - are the international community's attempt to address the worst of the criminal manifestations of racism, nationalism and large-scale xenophobia. Based on five months of ethnographic research at the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), analyzed using Erving Goffman's dramaturgical framework, this article examines the means through which moral authority is constructed and communicated by the ICTR. Specifically, the article advances the argument that the ICCs seek to personify the Generalized Other; that they claim to embody the universal authority and morality of the international community. The generalized other is an organized and generalized attitude with reference to which individuals define their conduct. The Generalized Other and institutions help socialize people in different parts of society to have the same responses, interests, and moral beliefs and conceptions of selves needed for understanding and synchronizing with others. It is through interactions - immediate and mediated - with Generalized Others that the self arises and is negotiated; that stigmatization of individuals and groups occur; that social concepts are defined; and that psychological citizenship manifests. Therefore, the interplay between inclusion and exclusion, hegemony and diversity in institutions that have the potential not only to communicate for, but also to embody and personify the international Generalized Other, as well as the very existence of such social institutions, is of great social significance.

The analysis of the ethnographic data traces the three dimensions of jurisdiction - geographical jurisdiction (space), temporal jurisdiction (time) and subject-matter jurisdiction (story) - which are also the three dimensions of theater and of reality. In describing the negotiation of each dimension the article explores the philosophical notion that law qua law claims legitimate and supreme authority and the sociological notion that courts, including international criminal courts, are among the most significant institutions to perform, dramaturgically speaking, such claims by explaining that, more specifically, courts try to fashion themselves as the embodiment of a truly universal Generalized Other proclaiming the universal morality of the international community. In contrast to that projected unity, a close decoding of the face-to-face interactions, the performances, which give rise to the abstraction the ICTR demonstrate that the negotiated reality that is the ICTR (and by implication, ICCs generally) is an emergent of and, at least to a degree, a reflection of cultural and gender differences and diversity. Whether or not one concludes that the ICTR's projection is successful, the attempt has profound implications for the formation of the self and citizenship of individuals in the international sphere.

ICTR, Rwanda, International Criminal law, Transitional Justice, international community, legal philosophy, Joseph Raz, Goffman, dramaturgy, theater, authority, legitimacy, generalized other, self, rape

Abstract:
From 2004 to 2006, the author led the pro bono representation of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (“SPLM”), assisting the SPLM in drafting and negotiating the National Interim Constitution of Sudan, the Interim Constitution of Southern Sudan and the Constitutions of two “transitional” states. The representation was part of an emerging trend in pro bono representations. In small but increasing numbers, private law firms have begun to take on pro bono projects with global significance - assisting governments and civil society in post-conflict countries to deal on an even footing with foreign investors, for instance, or working with international criminal courts to prepare indictments of war criminals. This development within the legal community is connected to changes in the scope and ambition of the “corporate responsibility” initiatives of many multinational corporate clients of the firms leading the internationalization of pro bono services.

Private law firms are hardly unique as third-party participants in the highest levels of inter- and intra-sovereign processes. Certainly, it is well known that foreign government assistance, inter-governmental organizations such as the UN or World Bank, and non-governmental organizations play a large role in the social and economic development of poorer countries. Less light has been shed, however, on the role those same entities play in the fundamental sovereign processes of formation, dissolution, war, and peace, and no discussion at all exists regarding the new role of law firms in such weighty international affairs. A close look at the way law firms operate in that rarefied space provides an illuminating contrast to the behavior of other actors.

The entry of law firms and multinational corporations into the ‘market’ of global affairs - long the exclusive domain of governments and inter-governmental organizations - offers many advantages to clients in developing and post-conflict countries, but also poses dangers which can and should be mitigated. One of the foremost benefits private law firms offer is their unique ability to ensure - even to guarantee - local ownership of the process and its content due to the strict requirements of the attorney-client relationship. These include attorneys’ obligations to follow the directives of their clients, to keep the confidences of the client and to act independently of any third party. Unlike other players in the field of international aid such as foreign donor governments, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and private foundations, private lawyers providing pro bono services do not receive donations, do not have “mandates” other than those dictated by the client (bounded, of course, by ethical regulations), and do not have real or imagined “constituencies” to which they are accountable, other than the client. Yet the enforceability of the ethical code that gives rise to those advantages is questionable in a transnational representation. A lack of regulation raises questions about legitimacy and accountability, and may suggest a specter of legal imperialism. A practical approach to mitigating those disadvantages can be gleaned from the novel work of an increasing number of scholars writing within the Global Administrative Law (“GAL”) paradigm. GAL scholars have analyzed the myriad ways in which disparate national administrative standards have been synchronized, though not necessarily harmonized, in various contexts (e.g., environmental concerns, accounting standards). A key concept in GAL scholarship is that of transnational networks - patterns of regular and purposive relations (and institutions) among like regulatory bodies working across borders dividing countries and demarcating the “domestic” from the “international.” The article will draw on this and other concepts and principles identified by GAL scholars proposing ways to bring a measure of accountability to transnational pro bono activities (indeed to transnational lawyering, generally) that respect the domestically self-regulated legal profession and which cannot (and should not) be harmonized across jurisdictions. Rather, the article suggests that regulation of global pro bono service should graduate from “accidental distributed administration” to “deliberate transnational network administration.” Without some attention paid to the way law firms operate in this arena, there is a risk that the ethical obligations of attorneys will become little more than a cover for advancing Western corporate interests.

South Sudan, Sudan, Pro Bono, Internationalized Pro Bono, Global Administrative Law, Attorney-Client relationship, post conflict, constitutions

Abstract:
This short article is a synopsis of a doctoral thesis entitled Law as Communication: A Concept of International Law. Embedded in the legal theory of philosopher Joseph Raz - who argued that "whatever else the law is, it either claims legitimate authority, is held to possess it, or both" - this analysis of international law's claim of legitimate authority is based on an ethnographic study of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former- Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The analysis of international law's claim of legitimate authority, which uses semiotics and performance-studies perspective, is then used as a basis for an examination of issues in analytic legal philosophy: the relationship between the phenomenology of law and its concept and the social-psychological dimensions of methodologies used and advocated for by legal philosophers.

International Criminal law and tribunals, war crimes, transitional justice, ICTY, ICTR, authority, legitimacy, legal philosphy, hermeneutic viewpoint , Josphe Raz, concept of law, performace studies, dramaturgy, inter-subjectivity, Goffman