Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law: An Introduction

This collection of essays is the first dedicated to the topic of critical approaches to international criminal law. This field has recently experienced a significant surge in scholarship, in institutions, and in public debate. Individual criminal accountability is firmly entrenched in both international law and the international consciousness as a necessary mechanism of responsibility. Yet international criminal law as a field has is largely unchecked and unquestioned. The speed at which international tribunals, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, or the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and of course the permanent International Criminal Court, were established has left little time to ponder the assumptions which inform international criminal justice as it is currently understood. A more considered interrogation this field is, then, overdue. And, including papers from an international range of experts in this area, this book critically examines the central tenets of international criminal law: its limitations, as well as its complicities.