What is it about?
International courts have increasing power and influence in discussions of global issues. This research examines how judges and lawyers working inside of international courts see their authority in relation to power exerted by states, other international organisations, and private actors. We draw together ethnographic research inside the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to show that the legal actors inside these courts routinely understood their power as severely limited by concurrent sites of private and public authority, but in ways that were often selective.
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Why is it important?
At a time when the role of the ICC and other international criminal tribunals is under question, it is important to understand how the practitioners of these institutions see the possibilities and limitations of their work. We need to understand why these courts are sometimes claimed to enable powerful enforcement of international criminal law, while at other times, the institutions do not seem to recognise their own strength.
Perspectives
This article was an opportunity for the authors to reflect on the confluence of their ideas on two datasets on two different International criminal tribunals. As they had both worked in these courts, writing together about their experience provided an opportunity for reflection and identification of mutual themes as to how international criminal lawyers perceive the power of international criminal law. They found striking similarities in their research at the Rwanda tribunal and the ICC. Sometimes, the people who work as lawyers at these courts believed their institutions to wield significant power, and a real challenge to impunity, while at other times, international criminal law was viewed as meek and disempowered.
Tomas Hamilton
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Legal Humility and Perceptions of Power in International Criminal Justice, International Criminal Law Review, November 2022, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15718123-bja10142.
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