Atrocity’s Glass Booth

Abstract

This paper foregrounds the defendant as a central actor in trials for mass atrocity. It excavates the practices and scripts of these trials to argue that they are driven by an impulse to construct flat perpetrator portraits. Perpetrators who enter into atrocity’s glass booth are transformed into defendants who are hostis humani generis. Perpetrators who escape this mythification are still viewed as perpetual perpetrators, the moment of their participation in atrocity radiating outwards to demarcate the juridical bookends of their lives. These lives, moreover, are seen as consisting of active choices representing uncompromised agency. The paper suggests that these portraits are tied to international criminal law’s attempt to justify itself as a normative project that claims to act in the name of humanity. It concludes that international criminal law’s aims would be better realized by viewing defendants as equal and engaged members of the community of humanity.