Krever: International Criminal Law: An Ideology Critique

Tor Krever (London School of Economics - Law) has posted International Criminal Law: An Ideology Critique (Leiden Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The article engages in an ideology critique of international criminal law texts and discourse, drawing on a theoretical framework developed by critical legal studies scholars in order to interrogate, in a different jurisprudential context, the assumptions undergirding contemporary international criminal law (ICL) scholarship. It argues that the triumphalism surrounding ICL and its adequacy to deal with conflict and violence ignores the factors and forces — including specific international legal interventions in countries’ political-economies — that shape or even help establish the environment from which such conflict and violence emanates. In uncritically celebrating ICL and equating it with a pacific international rule of law, ICL scholarship risks shaping passive acquiescence in the status quo and discouraging more through-going efforts to address the systemic forces underlying instances of violence, including political-economic forces shaped by international legal institutions.