Three Dangers for the International Criminal Court: A Critical Look at a Consensual Project

Abstract:     
This article argues that criticism of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been unduly abandoned to realists and conservatives. Instead, it proposes the contours of a more radical critique of the ICC that takes aim of some of its unquestioned liberal assumptions, including its claimed a-political character and its formalism. It argues that contemporary international criminal justice imports wholesale a number of outdated domestic criminological constructs and that its universalist cosmopolitanism is precarious, if not dangerous. It concludes that a new generation of "experts in horror" will only deliver on some of the promises of international criminal justice by shunning some of the hubris that has become associated with it.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 29

Keywords: International Criminal Court, ICC, international criminal tribunals, international criminal justice, liberalism, formalism, power, politics

JEL Classification: K1, K10, K33, N40

working papers series