Abstract
This is a theoretical and empirical investigation into the causal link (if any) between international criminal trials and preventing violence through exemplary prosecutions. Specifically how do representative trials of persons accused of having the greatest responsibility for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, supposedly bind recurrent violence? The argument pursued is that by using an accused as an example, a court engages in an indirect and uncertain substitution of personal rights for social harmony and order. These prosecutions combine a peculiar rhetoric, logic and aesthetic, all which substitute the responsibilities for a society in general to a particular individual in order to redeem that society by transferring its communal responsibility onto the individual punished as a form of atonement or expiation. International and domestic trials, as well as truth and reconciliation commissions, are part of a suite of options addressing communal mass violence that can work in tandem. However, because those convicted do not have a monopoly on criminality, nor do those merely reconciled have a monopoly on virtue, exemplification through punishment only targets a few on behalf of the many. Indeed such a redemptively sacrificial economy distinguishes legal justice from mere vengeance.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agamben, Giorgio. 1991. Language and death: The place of negativity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The open: Man and animal. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2009. The signature of all things: On method. New York: Zone Books.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2011. The kingdom and the glory: For a theological genealogy of economy and government. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Baines, Erin K. 2009. Complex political perpetrators: Reflections on Dominic Ongwen. The Journal of Modern African Studies 47(02): 163–191.
Barshack, Lior. 2000. The totemic authority of the court. Law and Critique 11: 301–328.
Beard, Jennifer. 2003. Understanding international development programs as a modern phenomenon of early and medieval Christian theology. Australian Feminist Law Journal 18: 27–54.
Beard, Jennifer. 2006. The confessional framework of rule of law development: How to offer salvation to willing legal subjects. Nordic Journal of International Law 75: 409–449.
Benjamin, Walter, et al. 1996. Selected writings, vol. 4. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
Bernard, Thomas J., et al. 2010. Vold’s theoretical criminology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Carroll, Robert P., and Stephen Prickett. 2008. The Bible: Authorized King James Version, Oxford world’s classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carr, Edward Hallett, and Michael Cox. 2001. The twenty years’ crisis, 1919–1939: An introduction to the study of international relations. Hampshire: Palgrave.
Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The selfish gene, 30th anniversary ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1981. Dissemination. Chicago: University Press.
Derrida, Jacques, and Geoffrey Bennington. 2009. The beast and the sovereign, Seminars of Jacques Derrida. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The sacred and the profane; the nature of religion. New York: Harcourt.
Eliade, Mircea. 1996. Patterns in comparative religion. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2009. From political emergencies and states of exception to exceptional states and emergent politics: A neo-Durkheimian alternative to Agamben. International Social Science Journal 58: 169–182.
Durkheim, Emile. 1912. The elementary forms of the religious life (English trans: Swain J.: 1915; new trans: Fields, K.E.: 1995). New York: Simon & Schuster.
Fox, Christopher A. 2007. Sacrificial pasts and messianic futures: Religion as a political prospect. In René Girard and Giorgio Agamben. Philosophy Social Criticism 33(5): 563–595.
Frazer, James George, and Robert Fraser. 2009. The golden bough: A study in magic and religion, Reissued ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford world’s classics).
Freud, Sigmund, and Katherine Jones. 1939. Moses and monotheism. London: The Hogarth press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis.
Gillespie, Michael Allen. 2008. The theological origins of modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Girard, René. 1977. Violence and the sacred. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Girard, René. 1986. The scapegoat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Girard, René, Jean-Michel Oughourlian, and Guy Lefort. 1987. Things hidden since the foundation of the world. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
Goodrich, Peter. 1990. Languages of law: From logics of memory to nomadic masks, Law in context. London: Weidenfeld.
Grbich, Judith. 2006. Secrets of the fetish in international law’s Messianism. In International law and its ‘others’, ed. Anne Orford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hubert, H., and Marcel Mauss. 1964. Sacrifice: Its nature and function. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jenkins, Fiona. 2004. Dialogue in the Aftermath: On good, evil and responsibility after September 11, borderlands ejournal 3(1). http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no1_2004/jenkins_dialogue.htm 9th October 2009.
Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 1997. The king’s two bodies: A study in mediaeval political theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Koskenniemi, Marti. 1989. From apology to utopia: The structure of international legal argument. Helsinki: Finnish Lawyers Publishing Company.
Koskenniemi, Marti. 2002. Between impunity and show trials. Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law 6(1): 1–32.
Koskenniemi, Marti. 2004. International law as political theology: How to read Nomos der Erde? Constellations 11(4): 492–511.
Löwith, Karl. 1949. Meaning in history; the theological implications of the philosophy of history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mondzain, Marie-José. 2005. Image, icon, economy: The Byzantine origins of the contemporary imaginary, cultural memory in the present. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Noll, Gregor. 2008. The miracle of generative violence? René Girard and the use of force in international law. Leiden Journal of International Law 21(03): 563–580.
Nouwen, Sarah, and Wouter G. Werner. 2010. Doing justice to the political: The international criminal court in Uganda and Sudan. The European Journal of International Law 21(4): 941–996.
Orford, Anne. 2006. Trade, human rights and the economy of sacrifice. In International law and its others, ed. Anne Orford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pankhurst, Richard. 1999. Italian fascist war crimes in Ethiopia: A history of their discussion, from the League of Nations to the United Nations (1936–1949). Northeast African Studies 6(1): 83–140. Project MUSE. Web. 21 Jan. 2011. http://muse.jhu.edu/.
Schmitt, Carl. 2005. Political theology: Four chapters on the concept of sovereignty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schmitt, Carl. 2008. Political theology II: The myth of closure of any political theology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Schabas, William. 2007. An introduction to the international criminal court. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shaw, Rosalind Lars Waldorf, and Pierre Hazan. 2010. Localizing transitional justice: Interventions and priorities after mass violence, Stanford studies in human rights. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Simons, Jon. 2008. Aestheticisation of politics: From fascism to radical democracy. Journal for Cultural Research 12(3): 207–229.
Simpson, Gerry J. 2004. Great powers and outlaw states: Unequal sovereigns in the international legal order, Cambridge studies in international and comparative law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simpson, Gerry. 2007. Law, war & crime. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Snyder, Jack L., and Leslie Vinjamuri. 2003–2004. Trials and errors: Principle and pragmatism in strategies of international justice. International Security 28(3): 5–44. Project MUSE. Web. 2 Apr. 2011. http://muse.jhu.edu/.
Tallgren, Immi. 2002. The sensibility and sense of international criminal Law. European Journal of International Law 13(3): 561–595.
Windeyer, William John Victor. 1938. Lectures on legal history. Sydney: Law Book Co. of Australasia Pty Ltd.
Zartaloudis, Thanos. 2010. Giorgio Agamben: Power, law and the uses of criticism. Nomikoi, Critical Legal Thinkers.
International Conventions
The United Nations. 1945. Charter of the United Nations, 1 UNTS XVI (entered into force 31 August 1965).
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. 1998. Opened for signature 17 July 1998, 2187 UNTS 3 (entered into force 1 July 2002).
Online Documents
Gekara, Emeka-Mayaka. 2009. ‘Former MP pleads innocence against war crimes’ Daily Nation Newspaper. http://www.nation.co.ke/News/politics/-/1064/817672/-/wu6ptcz/-/index.html. Accessed 11 April 2011.
Gignac, J 1907. Anathema. In The Catholic encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01455e.htm. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 1998. Press release L/2890 secretary-general says establishment of International Criminal Court is major step in March towards universal human rights, rule of law. http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/01668F61-04C7-405C-BE43-CA3078E9DFAD/274176/41833.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2006. Session 2: NGOs and other experts the hague. http://www.icc-cpi.int/menus/icc/structure%20of%20the%20court/office%20of%20the%20prosecutor/network%20with%20partners/public%20hearings/second%20public%20hearing/session%202/session%202?lan=en-GB. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2009a. Confirmation of charges hearing (open session) page 1 International Criminal Court pre-trial chamber III situation in the Central African republic—case ICC-01/05-01/08 confirmation of charges hearing—open session. http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/doc/doc618933.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2009b. International Criminal Court trial chamber I situation in the democratic republic of congo—case ICC-01/04-01/06 hearing—open session Tuesday, 27 January 2009 Case No. ICC-01/04-01/06 Tuesday, ICC-01/04-01/06-T-109-ENG WT 27-01-2009 1/59 NB T. http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/doc/doc623848.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2009c. ICC prosecutor: Kenya can be an example to the world press release: ICC-OTP-20090918-PR452. http://www.icc-cpi.int/menus/icc/structure%20of%20the%20court/office%20of%20the%20prosecutor/comm%20and%20ref/kenya/pr452?lan=en-GB. 18 September 2009. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2009d. ICC prosecutor supports three-pronged approach to justice in Kenya ICC press release: ICC-OTP-20090930-PR456. http://www.icccpi.int/menus/icc/situations%20and%20cases/situations/situation%20icc%200109/press%20releases/pr456?lan=en-GB. 30 September 2009. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2009e. Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo prosecutor of the International Criminal Court seventeenth diplomatic briefing statement. http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/B2000A0D-2159-40E6-A24F-8952FF34D3B4/281196/OTP_DiplomaticBriefing_04112009.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2010a. Part II resolutions adopted by the assembly of states parties. http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/ASP8/OR/OR-ASPR8-ENG.PART.II.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2010b. Resolution ICC-ASP/8/Res.9 adopted at the 10th plenary meeting, on 25 March 2010, by consensus. http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/Resolutions/ICC-ASP-8-Res.9-ENG.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2010c. Statement: OTP press conference on Kenya, prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo’s statement, 1 April 2010. http://www.icccpi.int/menus/icc/structure%20of%20the%20court/office%20of%20the%20prosecutor/reports%20and%20statements/statement/20100401?lan=en-GB. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2010d. 18th Diplomatic briefing 26 April 2010 ICC 2010 Luis Moreno-Ocampo prosecutor of the International Criminal Court statement the hague. http://www.icccpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/CA355D60-EC32-467A-8CA6-F7FA93D86C0B/281862/100426LMOspeechdiplomaticbriefing_final1.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2010e. ICC 2010 press release: ICC prosecutor to visit Kenya to meet victims and listen to all Kenyans ICC-OTP-20100504-PR521 http://www.icc-cpi.int/menus/icc/press%20and%20media/press%20releases/press%20releases%20(2010)/icc%20prosecutor%20to%20visit%20kenya%20to%20meet%20victims%20and%20listen%20to%20all%20kenyans?lan=en-GB. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2010f. Policy paper on preliminary examinations DRAFT the hague. http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/E278F5A2-A4F9-43D7-83D2-6A2C9CF5D7D7/282515/OTP_Draftpolicypaperonpreliminaryexaminations04101.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2010g. 19th Diplomatic briefing statement Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo prosecutor of the international criminal court. http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/F67584DE-F045-45E2-9503-8F4D16B3DEAA/282656/LMO_DiploBriefingspeech_03112011.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2011a. The appeals chamber situation in the democratic republic of the Congo situation in the democratic republic of the Congo public redacted version prosecutor’s document in support of the appeal brought by the prosecution against pre-trial chamber I’s 10 February 2006 decision on the prosecutor’s application for warrants of arrest, article 58. http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/doc/doc1009321.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2011b. Widespread or systematic killings in Cote d’Ivoire may trigger OTP investigation. http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/exeres/85A578D5-946A-44C3-9908-1C2243062EF0.htm. Accessed 11 April 2011.
ICC. 2011c. Situations and cases. http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/Situations+and+Cases/. Accessed 11 April 2011.
Justice Report. 2011. Trials have not helped reconciliation, survey shows. http://www.bim.ba/en/264/10/32161/. Accessed 11 April 2011.
Menya and Reuters. 2009. Ocampo urges Kenya unity over reforms. http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/680212/-/item/1/-/100yn8fz/-/index.html. Accessed 11 April 2011.
Mwanzia, Mutinda. 2010. Ocampo’s action plans. http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/InsidePage.php?id=2000006874&catid=4&a=1. Accessed 11 April 2011.
Thomasson, Emma. 2009. Darfur, Kenya courts to complement ICC: prosecutor. http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE59T0NA20091030. Accessed 11 April 2011.
UN. 2011. The United Nations Security Council referred Libya by unanimous resolution. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sc10187.doc.htm. Accessed 11 April 2011.
Acknowledgments
I acknowledge gratefully the helpfully critical comments on earlier drafts of this article by Peter Rush, Philip Stenning, Wouter G. Werner, Immi Tallgren and the two anonymous reviewers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bikundo, E. The International Criminal Court and Africa: Exemplary Justice. Law Critique 23, 21–41 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-011-9094-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-011-9094-1