Moral Accountability and International Criminal Law

This book examines international criminal law from a normative perspective and lays out how responsible agents, individuals and the collectives they comprise, ought to be held accountable to the world for the commission of atrocity. The author provides criteria for determining the kinds of actions that should be addressed through international criminal law. Additionally, it asks, and answers, how individual responsibility can be determined in the context of collectively perpetrated political crimes and whether an international criminal justice system can claim universality in a culturally plural world. The book also examines the function of international criminal law and finally considers how the goals and purposes of international law can best be institutionally supported.

This book is of particular interest to a multidisciplinary academic audience in political science, philosophy, and law, however the book is written in clear jargon-free prose that is intended to render the arguments accessible to the non-specialist reader interested in global justice, human rights and international criminal law.

Autorentext

Kirsten J. Fisher is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research at the University of Helsinki. Prior to this post, she held a post-doctoral research fellowship in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, and a visiting research fellowship at the Centre of Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, Faculty of Law, McGill University. She writes on issues of global justice and international criminal law.

Inhalt

1. The Distinct Domain of International Criminal Law 2. International Crimes 3. The Expressive Value of Judgement and Punishment 4. Challenges of Individual Responsibility within Collective Wrongs 5. Identifying Liability, Fair Labeling and ICL Offenses 6. Complementarity and the Detriments of Universal Jurisdiction 7. Evaluating Judicial Mechanisms 8. Retributive Justice as Culturally Insensitive? 9. Collective Responsibility and Collective Punishment. Conclusion