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17 - Selectivity in International Criminal Law

Asymmetrical Enforcement as a Problem for Theories of Punishment

from Part III - Consequences for the Practice of the International Criminal Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2020

Florian Jeßberger
Affiliation:
Universität Hamburg
Julia Geneuss
Affiliation:
Universität Hamburg
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Summary

Harmen van der Wilt explains the ICC’s and the Rome Statute’s ‘design selectivity’, i.e., the ICC’s legal, structural and political limitations and well as its inherent selectivity when selecting ‘situations’ and ‘cases’. He analyzes how the problem of selectivity in international criminal law, i.e., the systematical exemption of entire categories of perpetrators from accountability, creates tensions with traditional theories of punishment. In emphasizing the shift from punishment to trial, he argues that international criminal law’s inherent selectivity can best be processed by expressivism. However, contemporary international criminal law, he concludes, conveys the ‘perverse message’ that ‘criminal responsibility depends on the party or nation one belongs to and the side on which one fights’. For the future, he calls for an approach of ‘dauntless perseverance’.

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Chapter
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Why Punish Perpetrators of Mass Atrocities?
Purposes of Punishment in International Criminal Law
, pp. 305 - 322
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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