The Legitimacy Crisis Within International Criminal Justice and the Importance of Critical, Reflexive Learning

This chapter scrutinizes international criminal litigation, especially the institutions created to enforce international criminal justice: national courts and their principal jurisdictional complements; the International Criminal Court (ICC) and ad hoc tribunals. Based on Jessop’s conceptualisation of crisis, the legitimacy crisis within the international criminal justice system is explained. Then, drawing on the rule of law, Mutua’s critical characterisation of the human rights ‘corpus’ and a reflexive learning approach, it analyses different proposals to address this crisis by ending impunity through cases before the ICC and other institutions involved in prosecuting international crimes. The chapter concludes with reflections on the potential for legal learning as well as on potential future directions for international criminal litigation.