The Sentimental Court: The Affective Life of International Criminal Justice
The Sentimental Court: The Affective Life of International Criminal Justice

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The Sentimental Court: The Affective Life of International Criminal Justice

By Jonas Bens
Cambridge University Press February 2026

Specifications

ISBN-13
9781009069359
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publication
February 2026
Format
Paperback
Jurisdiction
U.K. ? Countri(es) for reference only

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Hardback

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Modern law seems to be designed to keep emotions at bay. The Sentimental Court argues the exact opposite: that the law is not designed to cast out affective dynamics, but to create them. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork - both during the trial of former Lord's Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen at the International Criminal Court's headquarters in The Netherlands and in rural northern Uganda at the scenes of violence - this book is an in-depth investigation of the affective life of legalized transitional justice interventions in Africa. Jonas Bens argues that the law purposefully creates, mobilizes, shapes, and transforms atmospheres and sentiments, and further discusses how we should think about the future of law and justice in our colonial present by focusing on the politics of atmosphere and sentiment in which they are entangled.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Affect, emotion and the law
Part I. Atmospheres:
1. Courtroom atmospheres: The courtroom of the ICC as an affective arrangement
2. Transitional justice atmospheres: The ICC's outreach work in northern Uganda
Part II. Sentiments:
3. The sentiment of plausibility: Affective framing and the production of legal truth
4. The sentiment of objectivity: Arranging objects and subjects in the ICC courtroom
5. The sentiment of justice: Navigating normative pluralism in northern Uganda
Part III. Politics:
6. The politics of atmosphere and sentiment: International criminal justice in Africa and competing indignation regimes
7. We have never been rational: The emotions of liberal legalism and the affective politics of modernity
Epilogue: Affect and colonialism
Bibliography
Index
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