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Courting failure: when are international criminal courts likely to be believed by local audiences?

Milanovic, Marko

Authors

Marko Milanovic



Contributors

Kevin Jon Heller
Editor

Frederic Megret
Editor

Sarah Nouwen
Editor

Jens Ohlin
Editor

Darryl Robinson
Editor

Abstract

The primary role of international criminal courts and tribunals is to punish those deserving of punishment. But beyond dispensing individualized justice, the question still remains whether such tribunals can also help deeply traumatized and divided societies heal on a more fundamental level. To do that, the factual accounts these tribunals produce – about the guilt of specific individuals for specific crimes, but also about the systemic nature and causes of these crimes – at least at some point need to be accepted by their local audiences. Crimes need to be believed to be remedied.

Some courts, like the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, have failed in this broader task. But is every international criminal court or tribunal similarly doomed to fail? Can we at least with some measure of reliability predict when such failure is likely? Drawing on research in social psychology and on a series of opinion polls in the former Yugoslavia, as well as on an analysis of the successes and failures of the Nuremberg, Tokyo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Cambodia tribunals, this chapter puts forward such a general predictive theory.

The chapter thus argues that whether an international criminal tribunal and its account of responsibility for committed atrocities will be trusted by local populations depends little on the quality of the tribunal’s work, the fairness of its procedures, or the scope of its outreach programme. It depends mostly on whether the tribunal’s outputs – decisions on whom to prosecute, convict, or acquit – align with what these populations want to hear in their particular context and at that particular time. Psychological mechanisms of identity-protective reasoning can easily lead to the widespread rejection of the relevant tribunal and its factual account. Whether this will in fact happen depends largely on one variable – the reaction of dominant local political, media and intellectual elites. The likelihood and potency of an adverse reaction can, in turn, be predicted by reference to four factors: (1) the degree of continuing group cohesion and polarization; (2) the degree of elite continuity in terms of both personnel and ideology; (3) the degree of authoritarianism in the relevant society; and, most importantly (4) the degree of threat that the work of the tribunal is perceived to pose to the power and influence of these elites.

Citation

Milanovic, M. (2020). Courting failure: when are international criminal courts likely to be believed by local audiences?. In K. J. Heller, F. Megret, S. Nouwen, J. Ohlin, & D. Robinson (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of international criminal law. Oxford University Press

Acceptance Date Jan 3, 2016
Online Publication Date Feb 25, 2020
Publication Date Feb 25, 2020
Deposit Date Mar 16, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Book Title The Oxford handbook of international criminal law
Chapter Number 11
ISBN 9780198825203
Keywords Criminal responsibility; atrocities, Rwanda; mass atrocities; public international law; war crime; human rights; international criminal tribunals
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/773925
Related Public URLs https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-international-criminal-law-9780198825203?cc=gb&lang=en&#
Additional Information The Oxford handbook of international criminal law / edited by Kevin Jon Heller, Frederic Megret, Sarah Nouwen, Jens Ohlin, Darryl Robinson., 2020], reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-international-criminal-law-9780198825203?cc=gb&lang=en&#