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The language of international criminal law has considerable traction in global politics, and much of its legitimacy is embedded in apparently 'axiomatic' historical truths. This innovative edited collection brings together some of the world's leading international lawyers with a very clear mandate in mind: to re-evaluate ('retry') the dominant historiographical tradition in the field of international criminal law.
Carefully curated, and with contributions by leading scholars, The New Histories of International Criminal Law pursues three research objectives: to bring to the fore the structure and function of contemporary histories of international criminal law, to take issue with the consequences of these histories, and to call for their demystification. The essays discern several registers on which the received historiographical tradition must be retried: tropology; inclusions/exclusions; gender; race; representations of the victim and the perpetrator; history and memory; ideology and master narratives; international criminal law and hegemonic theories; and more.
This book intervenes critically in the fields of international criminal law and international legal history by bringing in new voices and fresh approaches. Taken as a whole, it provides a rich account of the dilemmas, conundrums, and possibilities entailed in writing histories of international criminal law beyond, against, or in the shadow of the master narrative.
List of contents
- Foreword
- List of Contributors
- 1: Immi Tallgren and Thomas Skouteris: Editors Introduction
- 2: Gerry Simpson: Unprecedents
- 3: Founding Moments and Founding Fathers: Shaping Publics through
- the Sentimentalization of History Narratives
- 4: From the Sentimental Story of the State to the Verbrecherstaat, Or,
- the Rise of the Atrocity Paradigm
- 5: International Criminal Justice History Writing as Anachronism:
- The Past that Did Not Lead to the Present
- 6: Redeeming Rape: Berlin 1945 and the Making of Modern
- International Criminal Law
- 7: Voglio una donna!: On Rewriting the History of International
- Criminal Justice with the Help of Women Who Perpetrated
- International Crimes
- 8: Writing More Inclusive Histories of International Criminal
- Law: Lessons from the Slave Trade and Slavery
- 9: The Africa Blue Books at Versailles: The First World War, Narrative,
- and Unthinkable Histories of International Criminal Law
- 10: Crimes Against Humanity: Racialized Subjects and
- Deracialized Histories
- 11: Nazi Atrocities, International Criminal Law, and Soviet War
- Crimes Trials: The Soviet Union and the Global Moment
- of Post-Second World War Justice
- 12: Aleksi Peltonen: Theodor Meron and the Humanization of International Law
- 13: Mark Drumbl: Histories of the Jewish Collaborator: Exile, Not Guilt
- Index
About the author
Immi Tallgren is Senior Lecturer of Public International Law at the University of Helsinki; Research Fellow at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights; and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science. She is also associated member at the Centre de droit international, Université Libre de Bruxelles. She currently directs collaborative research on history of international law as well as on international law and media.
Thomas Skouteris is Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Ibrahim Shihata Memorial LLM Program in International and Comparative Law at the American University in Cairo. He has also taught at Leiden University, the Melbourne Law Masters Program, and the Central European University. Skouteris has served as Founding Secretary General of the European Society of International Law, Editor-in-Chief of the Leiden Journal of International Law, and Senior Fellow at the European Law Research Center of Harvard University.
Summary
This innovative edited collection brings together some of the world's leading international lawyers to re-evaluate ('retry') the dominant historiographical tradition of international criminal law.
