Moyn: From Aggression to Atrocity: Rethinking the History of International Criminal Law

Samuel Moyn (Harvard Univ. - Law and History) has posted From Aggression to Atrocity: Rethinking the History of International Criminal Law (in The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law, Kevin Jon Heller, Jens David Ohlin, Sarah Nouwen, Frédéric Mégret, & Darryl Robinson eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Explaining the shift from the priority of the charge of "aggression" in the beginning of the field of international criminal law to its exclusion in the age of the its reinvention around a suite of atrocity charges is the central task for historians in understanding this domain — and it also should matter for observers of the world today. Yet routinely, international criminal law is presented as running through a smooth trajectory, rather than a stark reversal or at least massive shift. For this reason, this essay gathers together elements for a case for the transformation in the first place, and floats some hypotheses about its timing and causes.