This book argues that accountability for extraordinary atrocity crimes should not uncritically adopt the methods and assumptions of ordinary liberal criminal law. Criminal punishment designed for common criminals is a response to mass atrocity and a device to promote justice in its aftermath. This book comes to this conclusion after reviewing the sentencing practices of international, national, and local courts and tribunals that punish atrocity perpetrators. Sentencing practices of these institutions fail to attain the goals that international criminal law ascribes to punishment, in particular retribution and deterrence. Fresh thinking is necessary to confront the collective nature of mass atrocity and the disturbing reality that individual membership in group-based killings is often not maladaptive or deviant behavior but, rather, adaptive or conformist behavior. This book turns to a modern, and adventurously pluralist, application of classical notions of cosmopolitanism to advance the frame of international criminal law to a broader construction of atrocity law and towards an interdisciplinary, contextual, and multicultural conception of justice.

This interdisciplinary volume offers an attempt to question, perplex and ultimately reframe our collective understanding of punishment.

Legitimacy -- Sovereignty -- Punishment -- Responsibility -- Economics -- Politics -- Evidence -- Fairness -- Concluding remarks

Reflections on Global Law provides an interesting and vital look into the newly emerging field of global law. It allows the possibility for readers to discover global law from the perspective of various academic experts who stem from a whole range of different legal disciplines. In a globalised world, it is important that one is able to look beyond the "local", given that there are now a whole host of different types of jurisdictions at work. This book touches upon the interdisciplinary character and complexities of global law and demonstrates the further need, within academia, to delve into this newly emerging field of law.

This book argues that the expressivist justice model provides a meaningful foundation for the participation of victims in international criminal proceedings. Traditional criminal justice theories have tended to marginalise the role afforded to victims while informing the criminal procedures utilised by international criminal courts. As a result, giving content to, shaping, and enhancing victims’ participatory rights have been some of the most debated issues in international criminal justice. This book contributes to this debate by advancing expressivism, which has the capacity to create a historical narrative of gross human rights violations, as a core of international criminal justice able to provide a worthwhile basis for the participation of victims in proceedings and clarifying the scope and content of their participatory rights. The work provides an in-depth discussion on issues related to victims’ participatory rights from the perspective of international human rights law, victimology, and the philosophical foundation of international criminal justice. The book will be a valuable resource for researchers, academics, and policymakers working in the areas of international criminal justice, international human rights law, transitional justice, and conflict studies.

Breaking the Cycle of Mass Atrocities investigates the role of international criminal law at different stages of mass atrocities, shifting away from its narrow understanding solely as an instrument of punishment of those most responsible. The book is premised on the idea that there are distinct phases of collective violence, and international criminal law contributes in one way or another to each phase. The authors therefore explore various possibilities for international criminal law to be of assistance in breaking the vicious cycle at its different junctures.

"The Oxford Handbook on Atrocity Crimes consolidates and further develops the evolving field of atrocity studies by combining major mono-, inter-, and multi-disciplinary research on atrocity crimes in one volume encompassing contributions of leading scholars. Atrocity crimes-war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide-are manifestations of large scale and systematic criminality committed within specific political, ideological, and societal contexts. These crimes are committed by a multiplicity of actors against a large number of victims who suffer far-reaching consequences. Scholars studying mass atrocities are scattered not only across disciplines-such as international (criminal) law, international relations, criminology, political science, psychology, sociology, history, anthropology, or demography-but also across the topic-related fields, which are by definition multi- and interdisciplinary but are typically limited to a particular category or aspect of atrocity crimes. This Handbook brings together these strands of scholarship on (mass) atrocities and interrogates atrocity crimes as an overarching category of criminality, while simultaneously keeping an eye on differences among the individual constitutive categories. The Handbook covers topics related to the etiology and causes of atrocities, the actors involved, the harm and victims of atrocity crimes, the reactions to mass atrocities, and in-depth case studies of understudied situations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide"--

This proposes a new framework for atrocity prevention, featuring scholars from around the globe including three former UN special advisers.

A Liberal Theory of International Justice advances a novel theory of international justice that combines the orthodox liberal notion that the lives of individuals are what ultimately matter morally with the putatively antiliberal idea of an irreducibly collective right of self-governance. The individual and her rights are placed at center stage insofar as political states are judged legitimate if they adequately protect the human rights of their constituents and respect the rights of all others. Yet, the book argues that legitimate states have a moral right to self-determination and that this right is inherently collective, irreducible to the individual rights of the persons who constitute them. Exploring the implications of these ideas, the book addresses issues pertaining to democracy, secession, international criminal law, armed intervention, political assassination, global distributive justice, and immigration. A number of the positions taken in the book run against the grain of current academic opinion: there is no human right to democracy; separatist groups can be morally entitled to secede from legitimate states; the fact that it is a matter of brute luck whether one is born in a wealthy state or a poorer one does not mean that economic inequalities across states must be minimized or even kept within certain limits; most existing states have no right against armed intervention; and it is morally permissible for a legitimate state to exclude all would-be immigrants.

International crime and justice are powerful ideas, associated with a vivid imagery of heinous atrocities, injured humanity, and an international community seized by the need to act. Through an analysis of archival and contemporary data, Imagining the International provides a detailed picture of how ideas of international crime (crimes against all of humanity) and global justice are given content, foregrounding their ethical limits and potentials. Nesam McMillan argues that dominant approaches to these ideas problematically disconnect them from the lived and the specific and foster distance between those who have experienced international crime and those who have not. McMillan draws on interdisciplinary work spanning law, criminology, humanitarianism, socio-legal studies, cultural studies, and human geography to show how understandings of international crime and justice hierarchize, spectacularize, and appropriate the suffering of others and promote an ideal of justice fundamentally disconnected from life as it is lived. McMillan critiques the mode of global interconnection they offer, one which bears resemblance to past colonial global approaches and which seeks to foster community through the image of crime and the practice of punitive justice. This book powerfully underscores the importance of the ideas of international crime and justice and their significant limits, cautioning against their continued valorization.