While resistance to international courts is not new, what is new, or at least newly conceptualized, is the politics of backlash against these institutions. Saving the International Justice Regime: Beyond Backlash against International Courts is at the forefront of this new conceptualization of backlash politics. It brings together theories, concepts and methods from the fields of international law, international relations, human rights and political science and case studies from around the globe to pose - and answer - three questions related to backlash against international courts: What is backlash and what forms does it take? Why do states and elites engage in backlash against international human rights and criminal courts? What can stakeholders and supporters of international justice do to meet these contemporary challenges?

This book theorizes the ways in which states that are presumed to be weaker in the international system use the International Criminal Court (ICC) to advance their security and political interests. Ultimately, it contends that African states have managed to instrumentally and strategically use the international justice system to their advantage, a theoretical framework that challenges the “justice cascade” argument. The empirical work of this study focuses on four major themes around the intersection of power, states' interests, and the global governance of atrocity crimes: firstly, the strategic use of self-referrals to the ICC; secondly, complementarity between national and the international justice system; thirdly, the limits of state cooperation with international courts; and finally the use of international courts in domestic political conflicts. This book is valuable to students, scholars, and researchers who are interested in international relations, international criminal justice, peace and conflict studies, human rights, and African politics.

The book looks at the outreach and communication strategies employed by internationalised courts to try to understand the wider impact of international justice. This book critically examines the role of outreach within international justice focusing specifically on the role of outreach at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). It contributes to understanding of the relationship between international courts and the affected populations; an area currently underexplored and little understood. The assumption that justice brings peace underpins much of the thinking, and indeed action, of international justice, yet little is known if this is actually the case. Significant questions surrounding the link between peace and justice remain: do trials deter would-be war criminals; is justice possible for the most heinous crimes; can international justice replace local justice? This book explores these questions in relation to recent developments in international justice that have both informed and shaped the creation of the hybrid tribunal in Sierra Leone. Through empirical analysis, Transitional Justice, Peace and Accountability, answers these questions and provides an insight into individual and community perceptions of international justice. This book will be of much interest to students of transitional justice, war crimes, peace and conflict studies, human rights, international law, and IR in general.

Today's international war crimes tribunals lack police powers, and therefore must prod and persuade defiant states to co-operate in the arrest and prosecution of their own political and military leaders. Victor Peskin's comparative study traces the development of the capacity to build the political authority necessary to exact compliance from states implicated in war crimes and genocide in the cases of the International War Crimes Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Drawing on 300 in-depth interviews with tribunal officials, Balkan and Rwandan politicians, and Western diplomats, Peskin uncovers the politicized, protracted, and largely behind-the-scenes tribunal-state struggle over co-operation.

Sustainable Development, International Criminal Justice, and Treaty Implementation provides a serious and timely perspective on the relationship between two important and dynamic fields of international law. Comprising chapters written by leading academics and international lawyers, this book examines how the principles and practices of international criminal law and sustainable development can contribute to one another's elaboration, interpretation and implementation. Chapters in the book discuss the potential and limitations of international criminalization as a means for protecting the basic foundations of sustainable development; the role of existing international crimes in penalizing serious forms of economic, social, environmental and cultural harm; the indirect linkages that have developed between sustainable development and various mechanisms of criminal accountability and redress; and innovative proposals to broaden the scope of international criminal justice. With its rigorous and innovative arguments, this book forms a unique and urgent contribution to current debates on the future of global justice and sustainability.

This major extension of existing scholarship on the fragmentation of international law utilises the concept of 'regimes' from international law and international relations literature to define functional areas such as human rights or trade law. Responding to existing approaches, which focus on the resolution of conflicting norms between regimes, it contains a variety of critical, sociological and doctrinal perspectives on regime interaction. Leading international law scholars and practitioners reflect on how, in situations of diversity and concurrent activity, such interaction shapes and controls knowledge and norms in often hegemonic ways. The contributors draw on topical examples of interacting regimes, including climate, trade and investment regimes, to argue for new methods of regime interaction. Together, the essays combine approaches from international, transnational and comparative constitutional law to provide important insights into an issue that continues to challenge international legal theory and practice.

Beyond Fragmentation assembles a unique team of expert practitioners and leading scholars to explore and advance the study of cross-fertilization among international courts and tribunals. Using an inter-disciplinary and multi-method approach, contributors analyse how international courts and tribunals interact and why it matters in practice. After a thorough review of prior assessments of cross-fertilization and fragmentation, the editors offer a new take on competition and cooperation across courts and tribunals, exploring both substantive and procedural elements as well as the diverse agents of cross fertilization. Contributors engage with procedural issues, identifying a “procedural cross-fertilization pull” and why and how procedure is converging in international courts and tribunals. Case studies on the convergence in the law of the sea and at the European Court of Human Rights provide contrasting experiences of substantive cross-fertilization. The volume also identifies a variety of agents of cross-fertilization, including judges, litigants, counsel, and international organizations.