Three Dangers for the International Criminal Court: A Critical Look at a Consensual Project
Finnish Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 12, pp. 195-247, 2002
29 Pages Posted: 9 Jul 2008 Last revised: 17 Sep 2008
Date Written: July 6, 2001
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 It argues that contemporary international criminal justice imports wholesale a number of outdated domestic criminological constructs and that its universalist cosmopolitanism is precarious, if not dangerous.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.
Keywords: International Criminal Court, ICC, international criminal tribunals, international criminal justice, liberalism, formalism, power, politics
JEL Classification: K1, K10, K33, N40
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation