Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Davis: Prosecutorial Discretion in International Criminal Justice

Cale Davis
(The Hague Univ. of Applied Sciences) has published Prosecutorial Discretion in International Criminal Justice (Edward Elgar Publishing 2025). This is the latest volume in the Elgar International Law series. Here's the abstract:

For many years, hidden from view in the secure corridors of The Hague, Arusha, and Freetown, international prosecutors have worked to bring those accused of international crimes to justice. Drawing on first-hand interviews with prosecutors, this book reveals what motivated their decisions – from opening investigations and selecting charges, right through to deciding whether to appeal.

The book explores the motivations and assumptions that underpin prosecutorial decision-making using in-depth analysis of interviews with current and former senior prosecutors from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), and the International Criminal Court (ICC). The author examines the diverse factors that have informed discretion by treating it as a practice. Cale Davis advances our understanding of discretion and exposes the importance of different roles in decision-making.