The Politics of International Criminal Law is an interdisciplinary collection of original research that examines the often noted but understudied political dimensions of International Criminal Law, and the challenges this nascent legal regime faces to its legitimacy in world affairs.

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.

On August 21, 2013, chemical weapons were unleashed on the civilian population in Syria, killing another 1,400 people in a civil war that had already claimed the lives of more than 140,000. As is all too often the case, the innocent found themselves victims of a violent struggle for political power. Such events are why human rights activists have long pressed for institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute some of the world’s most severe crimes: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. While proponents extol the creation of the ICC as a transformative victory for principles of international humanitarian law, critics have often characterized it as either irrelevant or dangerous in a world dominated by power politics. Christopher Rudolph argues in Power and Principle that both perspectives are extreme. In contrast to prevailing scholarship, he shows how the interplay between power politics and international humanitarian law have shaped the institutional development of international criminal courts from Nuremberg to the ICC. Rudolph identifies the factors that drove the creation of international criminal courts, explains the politics behind their institutional design, and investigates the behavior of the ICC. Through the development and empirical testing of several theoretical frameworks, Power and Principle helps us better understand the factors that resulted in the emergence of international criminal courts and helps us determine the broader implications of their presence in society.

This volume presents an overview of the principal features of the legacy of International Tribunals and an assessment of their impact on the International Criminal Court and on the review process of the Rome Statute. It illustrates the foundation of a system of international criminal law and justice through the case-law and practices of the UN ad hoc tribunals and other internationally assisted tribunals and courts. These examples provide advice for possible future developments in international criminal procedure and law, with particular reference to their impact on the ICC and on national jurisdictions. The review process of the Rome Statute is approached as a step of a review process to provide a perspective of the developments in the field since the Statute’s adoption in 1998.

International Criminal Law in Context provides a critical and contextual introduction to the fundamentals of international criminal law. It goes beyond a doctrinal analysis focused on the practice of international tribunals to draw on a variety of perspectives, capturing the complex processes of internationalisation that criminal law has experienced over the past few decades. The book considers international criminal law in context and seeks to account for the political and cultural factors that have influenced – and that continue to influence – this still-emerging body of law. Considering the substance, procedures, objectives, justifications and impacts of international criminal law, it addresses such topics as: • the history of international criminal law; • the subjects of international criminal law; • transitional justice and international criminal justice; • genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression; • sexual and gender-based crimes; • international and hybrid criminal tribunals; • sentencing under international criminal law; and • the role of victims in international criminal procedure. The book will appeal to those who want to study international criminal law in a critical and contextualised way. Presenting original research, it will also be of interest to scholars and practitioners already familiar with the main legal and policy issues relating to this body of law.

To anyone setting out to explore the entanglement of international criminal justice with the interests of States, Germany is a particularly curious, exemplary case. This book draws on government documents and interviews with policymakers, to enrich a broader debate which has to date often been focused primarily on the United States.

To anyone setting out to explore the entanglement of international criminal justice with the interests of States, Germany is a particularly curious, exemplary case. Although a liberal democracy since 1949, its political position has altered radically in the last 60 years. Starting from a position of harsh scepticism in the years following the Nuremberg Trials, and opening up to the rationales of international criminal justice only slowly - and then mainly in the context of domestic trials against functionaries of the former East German regime after 1990 - Germany is today one of the most active supporters of the International Criminal Court. The climax of this is its campaigning to make the ICC independent of the UN Security Council - a debate in which Germany took a position in stark contrast to the United States. This book offers new insight into the debates leading up to such policy shifts. Drawing on government documents and interviews with policymakers, it enriches a broader debate on the politics of international criminal justice which has to date often been focused primarily on the United States.