To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
This article offers a critical analysis of gender in life-history narratives of children born of war (CBOW) and in the construction of legal recognition of CBOW in recent decisions of the International Criminal Court (ICC). As this article shows, the perceptions of the biological mother and father have shaped narratives by and on this group, albeit to different effects. An analysis of interview and documentary data shows that the mother is perceived by the CBOW participants with critical ambivalence, while the father is a symbol of personal identification, which has informed the participants’ understanding of harm and blame. In light of these findings, this article analyses recent decisions by the ICC and the way the biological mothers and fathers of CBOW are framed by the Court. In reference to gender theory, a critical discussion follows of the images of the ‘good mother’ and the ‘bad father’ the Court is employing to recognize CBOW as victims. The gendered dichotomies at play and their implications are discussed in light of the growing attention paid to CBOW in international criminal law. The findings challenge the recent and still evolving legal narrative on CBOW at the ICC, with implications for how recognition for CBOW might be reimagined in light of their own voices.
In this chapter, I assess whether leaders in good standing receive more support from RIO co-members even as they flee into exile. I first present descriptive information on the role of RIOs in leaders’ exile paths. The descriptive analysis shows that post-1999, African RIOs have been involved in almost all negotiations around member state leaders entering exile, often protecting leaders from imprisonment. I then present two analytic narrative case studies.
This chapter posits that risk assessment necessary as a condition precedent to settlement requires evidentiary transparency as to all stakeholders, including the arbitral tribunal. Moreover, this chapter discusses and asserts that settlement and mediation techniques are futile absent a thorough understanding of the underlying evidence, and objective procedural methodologies governing admissibility, relevance, materiality, and weight of the evidence. Thus, the chapter analyzes features and possible amendments to the rules of the leading ICA institutional administrative bodies that would enhance the predictive value of determinations based on existing evidence. Consequently, the evidential framework of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC), the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC), the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR), and the German Arbitration Institute (DIS) rules are analyzed.
As Kamari Maxine Clarke likewise explores in her chapter, the intersection of rights and “transitional justice” in diverse situations has become one of the defining features of our time. Narrating the classic role of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of Apartheid, Clarke dramatizes the struggle over the meaning of transition, distinguishing between the “moralistic” goal of forgiveness and the more confrontational demand for accountability. For Clarke, the performativity of justice – it is always rendered by someone – means the history of human rights needs to be equally attentive to when it is not provided or when crimes are perpetrated or mistakes made in its name. What we see is that particular transitional justice speech acts enable the reproduction of particular types of power.
On what basis may the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) exercise its jurisdiction over States that have withdrawn from the Rome Statute? Is it enough that the alleged crimes occurred before the State withdrew from the treaty? When acting proprio motu, does the Prosecutor have to seek authorization from a Pre-Trial Chamber before they are allowed to proceed with the criminal investigation post-State withdrawal? This issue has received only cursory attention from the ICC and the academic community but the lack of clarity around the Court’s post-withdrawal jurisdiction is a serious concern, and not only for States that have withdrawn their membership (such as the Philippines). It is important because, as things stand, and given what the Court has said so far, States parties cannot be sure of the parameters of the Court’s temporal jurisdiction, nor of the legal effects of a State’s withdrawal.
The chapter examines the application of intersectionality theory to feminist judgment writing at the International Criminal Court (ICC), questioning whose feminism is centered and which intersections matter. Drawing on Black feminist scholarship, Dawuni evaluates both the merits and limitations of intersectionality as a framework for judicial decision-making in international criminal law. The chapter argues that while intersectionality can illuminate how multiple identities shape experiences of victimisation and access to justice, careful attention must be paid to avoid reproducing marginalisation through oversimplified applications. It critiques the continued impact of coloniality on the ICC’s operations and questions the homogenisation of African experiences in international law. The analysis concludes with recommendations for judges, registry staff, and researchers, emphasising the need for continuous education on intersectionality, greater institutional diversity, and constant self-reflection about positionality and privilege. Dawuni argues that true intersectional justice requires transforming both the composition and operational culture of international criminal institutions.
The chapter interrogates the value of applying the feminist judgment methodology (FJM) to the International Criminal Court (ICC), addressing skepticism about whether such projects are merely wishful thinking. Through the metaphor of fairy tales, McLoughlin examines tensions between feminist legal theory and judicial practice, arguing that feminist judgments are not simply acts of imagination but demonstrate real possibilities within existing legal frameworks. McLoughlin makes two key arguments for extending the FJM to the ICC. First, the ICC’s poor record on gender justice, including limited convictions for sexual and gender-based crimes, makes it an important site for feminist intervention. Second, the Rome Statute’s unrealised promise of gender justice - including provisions for gender expertise and representation - provides a firm foundation for feminist judicial approaches. The chapter concludes that feminist judgment writing serves to legitimise gender-sensitive approaches to international criminal law while acknowledging law’s limitations and demonstrates how the ICC’s commitment to gender justice could be meaningfully realised through feminist judicial practice.
The chapter reproduces Gopalan’s speech delivered at the International Criminal Court’s 20th anniversary conference at The Hague in 2022, examining intersectional approaches to investigating and prosecuting sexual and gender-based crimes in international criminal law. Gopalan explains intersectionality as an analytical framework that reveals how multiple identities and systems of oppression shape international crimes. Through case studies including Korean "comfort women," Srebrenica’s Muslim women, and Tamil male survivors in Sri Lanka, she demonstrates how factors like gender, colonialism, class, ethnicity, and religion intersect to create distinct patterns of harm and victimisation. Gopalan argues that while gender analysis has advanced understanding of sexual violence, examining gender alone is insufficient. Her analysis reveals how intersectional approaches can uncover overlooked structural inequalities and make visible what might otherwise remain unseen, enabling more comprehensive and survivor-responsive justice processes. The speech argues for expanding investigative and prosecutorial frameworks beyond single-axis analysis to better serve the complex realities of survivors.
The chapter presents a dialogue between Mudukuti and Chappell, examining critical challenges facing the International Criminal Court (ICC) through the lens of Mudukuti’s experience as practitioner, advocate, and trainer. Drawing on her work at the ICC, domestic courts, and civil society organizations, Mudukuti highlights the urgent need for greater intersectionality in international criminal justice. The conversation focuses on institutional reform at the ICC, addressing the Court’s problematic staff composition where over half of professional positions are held by individuals from Western European and Other Groups. Mudukuti argues a lack of geographic, racial, and gender diversity in leadership affects how cases are approached, evidence is interpreted, and justice is delivered. The dialogue examines the role of civil society in advancing reform and the importance of amicus curiae briefs in bringing diverse perspectives to ICC cases, particularly regarding sexual violence. Mudukuti emphasizes that intersectionality requires transforming both institutional composition and judicial understanding through continuous learning and openness to different disciplinary perspectives.
The chapter synthesises key findings from the collection of feminist reimaginings of International Criminal Court (ICC) judgments. The editors Louise Chappell, Suzanne Varrall, Kcasey McLoughlin and Rosemary Grey first examine methodological lessons from feminist judgment writing, highlighting three key themes: the critical role of contextualisation in understanding gendered dimensions of atrocity crimes; the necessity of intersectional analysis in capturing how multiple forms of discrimination intersect; and the significance of temporality in judicial decision-making.
The chapter analyses opportunities and barriers for advancing gender justice at the ICC, examining both internal factors (like judicial diversity and training) and external pressures (including geopolitics and evolving conflict dynamics). While some contributors to the book argue the ICC’s structural limitations make it incapable of delivering gender justice, others contend meaningful progress is possible through better implementation of existing provisions rather than statutory reform. The chapter concludes that despite significant challenges, the ICC remains an important, if imperfect, vehicle for advancing gender justice in international criminal law.
The chapter presents a dialogue between Sellers and Grey, exploring how "absent jurisprudence" from past international tribunals shapes contemporary international criminal law. Through a discussion of cases from Tokyo and Nuremberg to the ICC, Sellers demonstrates how opportunities for gendered analysis of crimes like enslavement were missed, creating enduring gaps in legal understanding. The conversation focuses on the overlooked cases of "comfort women" at the Tokyo Tribunal, women’s detention at the Ravensbrück camp during World War II, and the evolution of enslavement jurisprudence from the ICTY’s Kunarac case to recent ICC proceedings. Sellers argues that had early tribunals conducted deeper intersectional analyses of gender, race, and class in enslavement cases, contemporary courts would be better equipped to address similar crimes. The chapter suggests the Rome Statute’s bifurcation of "sexual slavery" from "enslavement" obscures how enslavement inherently involves control over victims’ sexuality and reproduction. The conversation reveals how jurisprudential gaps continue to constrain judges’ ability to fully recognize and address gendered dimensions of international crimes.
The chapter introduces the first collection of feminist judgments analysing decisions of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The editors outline how the book draws on the established feminist judgment methodology and extends it to international criminal law to present a range of re-written decisions from nine ICC situations. The chapter outlines the book’s three-part structure: conceptual foundations, re-written judgments with accompanying reflections, and concluding analysis. It details the editorial decisions regarding situation selection, contributor diversity, and methodological adaptations for the international context. It also describes how the book goes beyond traditional legal analysis by incorporating poetry and photography to transcend the limitations of judicial discourse. The chapter concludes that the feminist judgment method reveals significant opportunities for enhancing gender justice at the ICC, while acknowledging the Court’s political constraints. It argues that judges could deliver more gender-sensitive decisions within the existing Rome Statute framework, thereby contributing to both international criminal law scholarship and feminist legal methodology.
This chapter explores the interaction between international human rights law (IHRL) and international humanitarian law (IHL), as well as international criminal law. It examines how IHRL influences the application and development of IHL and how human rights principles are integrated into international criminal procedures and substantive law. The chapter discusses the mutual reinforcement and potential conflicts between these branches of international law, highlighting the need for a coherent and integrated approach. It also explores the role of international courts and tribunals in applying and interpreting IHRL, IHL, and international criminal law, and the challenges in ensuring compliance and accountability.
This article aims to explain the protean nature of the concept of “legitimacy,” arguing that its variability largely stems from denoting a quality of institutions that is both internally complex and sensitive to variations in institutional context. While this institutional-context sensitivity often leads to confusion and miscommunication, it is also what centers the concept’s meaning and use. To better understand legitimacy’s different forms of institutional-context sensitivity, and how they are interconnected, the article shifts from analysis and comparisons of concepts and theories of legitimacy to analysis and comparison of specific legitimacy arguments regarding specific institutions. It introduces a structured framework for analyzing legitimacy claims, beginning with the identification of the institutional level that the argument is directed at. This approach highlights how legitimacy assessments vary across higher and lower institutional levels—a crucial aspect of institutional-context sensitivity that has been underexplored in recent institutional legitimacy literature. The framework, comprising four steps of analysis and two supporting figures, advances our understanding of the complex nature of institutions’ legitimacy and underscores the importance of distinguishing between the legitimacy of an institution and the legitimacy within an institution. Throughout, the article illustrates the framework with examples drawn from scholarly debates on the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court.
This paper contributes to an underdeveloped yet critical feature of international criminal law – victim assistance. With the creation of the ICC and the Trust Fund for Victims, the idea of victim assistance in situations of mass criminalities was provided an institutional backbone. However, much of its operational principles remain theoretically ill-defined. Through a methodological study of over a decade of assistance programmes administered by the Fund, this paper sheds light on some of the critical operational principles which have emerged in practice. Additionally, in light of these principles, this paper argues that there exist two major causes of ineffectiveness which hamper the Fund’s assistance work – first, the problem of defining its goals in definite, strategic terms, and second, the overlap between assistance mandate of the Fund and reparations regime of the ICC. It concludes by making course-correction suggestions for the Fund to chart a future towards an effective organization building.
The problem of characterizing the manifest probabilities of a latent trait model is considered. The item characteristic curve is transformed to the item passing-odds curve and a corresponding transformation is made on the distribution of ability. This results in a useful expression for the manifest probabilities of any latent trait model. The result is then applied to give a characterization of the Rasch model as a log-linear model for a 2J- contingency table. Partial results are also obtained for other models. The question of the identifiability of “guessing” parameters is also discussed.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a legal institution embedded in international politics. Politics shaped the Rome Statute of the ICC, which is rooted in norms and rules of European lineage and security interests of party states. Politics constrains and influences the operation of the Court, which has adapted in response to oversight and governance of the Assembly of States Parties, and to political actions extrinsic to institutional rules. The ICC also has political effects in situation states. A brief history shows that application of Rome Statute triggers across state parties with different social conditions skewed geographic distribution of its investigations and prosecutions towards Africa, a structural bias that catalysed a legitimation crisis for the ICC. Subsequent exercises of expansive jurisdiction aimed at nationals of non-African, non-party states – including Israel and some of the world's great powers – have dampened African complaints and advanced the ICC agenda, but intensified non-legitimacy claims by powerful non-party states. To survive, Court organs must follow legal mandates, yet be responsive to pressing international political demands, continuously risking the legitimacy of the ICC as a legal institution and adverse political reactions by antagonised governments. Careful management of the tension between law and politics at the ICC may modestly reduce antagonism towards the Court, but that tension cannot be resolved, and confrontations over the ICC's legitimacy are certain to recur.
The Deal New regulated banks, transportation, and energy among other industries, in the 1930s. In the 1970s, there was a mostly bipartisan effort to reduce regulation in those industries. Although Ronald Reagan is known as the deregulation president, it was Jimmy Carter that started deregulation in each of those industries. Alfred Kahn, whom Carter appointed to lead the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), together with recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, advised Senator Ted Kennedy on how to deregulate airlines. The deregulation of truck, railroad, bus, and transportation, along with natural gas deregulation, followed. Deregulation was based on policy evidence that changes in those industries made it possible to lessen regulation and depend on markets to achieve greater efficiencies. By comparison, Congress decision to reduce regulation of savings and loan banks, based on industry lobbying, ended in disaster as S&Ls failed because of risky behavior and Congress had to bail them out. On balance, the regulation that occurred rebalanced the mix of government and markets in order to achieve a more robust economy.
The Conclusions reflect on the law outlined in Chapters 1−10. They recall that IHL is essentially an attempt to balance two fundamentally contradictory drivers – the need to wage war effectively, and the need to protect people and property from the excessive effects of warfare. It concludes that IHL largely succeeds in this endeavour, and that without IHL life for those caught up in armed conflict would be immeasurably worse. It notes, however, that while the fundamental principles of IHL are enduring, States can and should do more to develop new or more comprehensive laws where there is a need, such as the under-developed law of non-international armed conflict and the lack of regulation of certain weapons.