{"title":"International criminalization and the historical emergence of international crimes","authors":"S. Randhawa","doi":"10.1017/S1752971922000021","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines international criminalization, the process by which particular acts come to be established as international crimes in world politics. While international legal scholars suggest international criminalization constitutes a legal process that centres on international legal codification, this article argues, by drawing upon the insights of constructivist International Relations scholarship, that it is better conceived as a social process. More specifically, the process of international criminalization involves the development of an international social consensus on international criminality, which takes hold in international society following diplomatic negotiations between social actors. Furthermore, international criminalization embraces a two-stage process that requires, firstly, the emergence of an international criminal norm and secondly, the translation of that norm into an international legal proscription. Using these conceptual insights, the article analyses, through a close analysis of international archival documents, the historical emergence of genocide, in order to demonstrate how its proposed conceptualization of international criminalization can better explain how and why this act was specifically established as an international crime. In doing so, the article offers an alternative account of genocide's criminalization which, unlike the existing literature, goes some way towards uncovering the processes of social construction that informed its establishment as an international crime.","PeriodicalId":46771,"journal":{"name":"International Theory","volume":"14 1","pages":"460 - 502"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Theory","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752971922000021","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Abstract This article examines international criminalization, the process by which particular acts come to be established as international crimes in world politics. While international legal scholars suggest international criminalization constitutes a legal process that centres on international legal codification, this article argues, by drawing upon the insights of constructivist International Relations scholarship, that it is better conceived as a social process. More specifically, the process of international criminalization involves the development of an international social consensus on international criminality, which takes hold in international society following diplomatic negotiations between social actors. Furthermore, international criminalization embraces a two-stage process that requires, firstly, the emergence of an international criminal norm and secondly, the translation of that norm into an international legal proscription. Using these conceptual insights, the article analyses, through a close analysis of international archival documents, the historical emergence of genocide, in order to demonstrate how its proposed conceptualization of international criminalization can better explain how and why this act was specifically established as an international crime. In doing so, the article offers an alternative account of genocide's criminalization which, unlike the existing literature, goes some way towards uncovering the processes of social construction that informed its establishment as an international crime.
期刊介绍:
Editorial board International Theory (IT) is a peer reviewed journal which promotes theoretical scholarship about the positive, legal, and normative aspects of world politics respectively. IT is open to theory of absolutely all varieties and from all disciplines, provided it addresses problems of politics, broadly defined and pertains to the international. IT welcomes scholarship that uses evidence from the real world to advance theoretical arguments. However, IT is intended as a forum where scholars can develop theoretical arguments in depth without an expectation of extensive empirical analysis. IT’s over-arching goal is to promote communication and engagement across theoretical and disciplinary traditions. IT puts a premium on contributors’ ability to reach as broad an audience as possible, both in the questions they engage and in their accessibility to other approaches. This might be done by addressing problems that can only be understood by combining multiple disciplinary discourses, like institutional design, or practical ethics; or by addressing phenomena that have broad ramifications, like civilizing processes in world politics, or the evolution of environmental norms. IT is also open to work that remains within one scholarly tradition, although in that case authors must make clear the horizon of their arguments in relation to other theoretical approaches.