International Criminal Law Using or Abusing Legality?

This book analyses the relationship between law and violence, the utility of law over violence and whether legality as an approach has an inherent disability in addressing mass violence as a crime. The study is located within international law and assesses whether prosecuting political violence would necessarily entail an abuse of the legal process. The intention is to encourage definition of criminal aggression via legal processes laid down by the International Criminal Court, rather than giving favour to political action under the United Nations Charter. Issues discussed in the book include the controversies over the location of the crime of aggression in either law or politics, taking a legal approach to the problems outlined. Using examples from Libya, the Ivory Coast, and Kenya, the work will be of interest to those working in the areas of international criminal justice, international law, legal theory, and international relations.

Table of Cases, Table of Legal Instruments, Preface, 1. The Responsibility to Protect Civilians from Political Violence: Locating Necessity between the Rule and its Exception, 2. International Criminal Law: From Hostis to Hostia Humani Generis, 3. Between Necessity and Contingency: Representing Legality as a Faustian Pact, 4. Global Law: From Force and Law to Aggression and Legality, 5. The Deficiencies of Law before Overwhelming Violence, 6. A Possible Methodology of Judicial Discourse in Marshalling, Interpreting, and Construing Aggression Clauses, 7. Exclusion and Inclusion: From Biopolitics to Biolegality, 8. Abuse of Legality: The Illegal Use of the Legal, 9. Reframing Criminal Aggression from Outside to Inside Law, 10. Legality and Resolving Ambiguity, References, Index

Edwin Bikundo is a Lecturer at the School of Law at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. He has teaching and research interests in international and comparative law and critical legal theory. His current research focuses on the role of the international criminal trial in preventing the reoccurrence of violence.