International politics of justice: the political underpinnings of the emergence of an international regime

Abstract

This paper is an attempt at reconstituting the emergence of the international mechanisms of criminal justice after the Cold War from the point of view of the articulation between the fundamental norm of the modern system of states -sovereignty- and the corpus of human rights, more precisely, on the regime formation of international criminal justice. Our approach will focus on the political, rather than on the legal aspects of this process. While it is difficult enough to conceptualize and to theoretically justify the link between sovereignty and the possibility for individuals to become subjects of international law, a further obstacle to the emergence of international criminal justice is the overcoming of the strategic interests of particular states, especially great powers, in establishing such a jurisdiction. Since international law remains politically negotiable, we will try to look into the political context that allowed for the developments that led, at the end of the 1990s, to the creation of the ICC, as well as to the transformation of the meaning of "sovereignty", in order to include the responsibility to protect citizens against ethnic cleansing, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Thus, some of the questions addressed in this contribution will be: which is the conceptual link between sovereignty and human rights? Subsequently, how do individuals become subjects of international law? Which is the extent of the "universality" of human rights? The linkage between these sets of questions might provide a critical perspective on the transformation of international politics.