International criminal law has witnessed a rapid rise after the end of the Cold War. The United Nations refers to the birth of a new 'age of accountability', but certain historical objections, such as selectivity or victor's justice, have never fully gone away, and many of the justice dimensions of international criminal law remain unexplored. Various critiques have emerged in socio-legal scholarship or globalization discourse, revealing that there is a stark discrepancy between reality and expectation. Linking discussion of legal theories, case-law and practice to scholarship and opinion, A Critical Introduction to International Criminal Law explores these critiques through five main themes at the heart of contemporary dilemmas:The shifting contours of criminality and international crimesThe tension between individual and collective responsibilityThe challenges of domestic, international, hybrid and regional justice institutionsThe foundations of justice proceduresApproaches towards punishment and reparationSuitable for students, academics and professionals from multiple fields wishing to understand contemporary theories, practices and critiques of international criminal law. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

A Critical Introduction to International Criminal Law

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world … . Surely some revelation is at hand. W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming 1919.1 If ambition carries the day, … they will...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1441600

Introduction to Special issue: ´migration governance in an era of large movements: a multi-level approach’

International refugee law is seen by many as constitutive for national refugee policy. Yet, as asylum has become politicized, many countries have adopted procedural and physical deterrence mechanisms to prevent refugees from accessing protection. The present article examines these policies, as well as the legal responses to them, as a critical case study for understanding the relationship between international law and refugee policy. Based on a theoretical triangulation of the dominant accounts of the interplay between international law and politics within liberal, realist and critical legal studies scholarship, it is argued that the two should rather be seen in a dialectic process of co-evolution. This speaks both to the continued power of international refugee law, but also to the instrumentalist approach of certain states trying to contest or circumvent their international legal commitments.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2487087_code2282432.pdf?abstractid=2487087&mirid=1

International Refugee Law and Refugee Policy: The Case of Deterrence Policies

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Protection from Refuge

1. The legal framework: transnational crime, law of the sea, and migration control 2. The legal framework: human rights and refugee law 3. Acting against migrant smuggling: capacities and limitations 4. State responsibility and migrant smuggling 5. Criminalization of migrant smuggling 6. Migrant smuggling by sea: interdiction and rescue 7. Prevention and international cooperation to combat migrant smuggling 8. Obligations of protection, assistance, and response 9. Obligations relating to detention of smuggled migrants 10. Return of smuggled migrants.

The International Law of Migrant Smuggling

This interdisciplinary study engages law, history, and political theory in a first attempt to crystallize the lessons the global 'refugee crisis' can teach us about the nature of international law. It connects the dots between the actions of Jewish migrants to Palestine after WWII, Vietnamese 'boatpeople', Haitian refugees seeking to reach Florida, Middle Eastern migrants and refugees bound to Australia, and Syrian refugees currently crossing the Mediterranean, and then legal responses by states and international organizations to these movements. Through its account of maritime migration, the book proposes a theory of human rights modelled around an encounter between individuals in which one of the parties is at great risk. It weaves together primary sources, insights from the work of twentieth-century thinkers such as Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas, and other legal materials to form a rich account of an issue of increasing global concern.

Humanity at Sea: Maritime Migration and the Foundations of International Law

The article explores the trope of the “legal black hole” to reveal questions of legal theory arising from contemporary migrant drownings. The theme was popularized during what was then called the “war on terror,” but its trajectory is longer and more complex. Its material history, as well as its intellectual history within legal scholarship, suggest three distinct ‘legacies’ of legal black holes: the counter-terrorism legacy; the migrant-detention legacy; and the legacy of the maritime legal black hole. The tripartite division provides a typology of instances where persons are rendered rightless. While the two former types are characterized by de-facto rightlessness due to a violation of international law, the latter exposes a seldom-acknowledged yet crucial characteristic of international law: age-old doctrine on the division of responsibilities between states and individuals at land and at sea is now creating the conditions in which some people are rendered de-jure rightless. Moreover, the typology sheds light on the specifically legal reasons for the seeming failure to end mass drowning of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. Tracing the ways in which people become de-jure rightless is ultimately suggested as a broader research agenda for scholars of international law.

/pdf/maritime-legal-black-holes-migration-and-rightlessness-in-4nicwyeoep.pdf

Maritime Legal Black Holes: Migration and Rightlessness in International Law

In recent years, Greece has inflicted widespread inhuman and degrading treatment on asylum seekers The European Union border agency Frontex has knowingly exposed asylum seekers to such treatment in Greek detention centres This article argues that acts of Greek and Frontex agents may lead to individual responsibility for crimes against humanity under Article 7 1 (e), (h) and (k) of the Rome Statute Investigation of such acts remains unlikely, not due to the relevant doctrine, but due to a popular imagination of crimes against humanity as radically evil acts But International Criminal Law should not only aim to punish radically evil acts Equally important is seemingly banal violence that appears as an inevitable by-product of global social and economic structures Such is the violence currently wielded against asylum seekers Confronting the latter category requires the ICC Prosecutor to realize the political nature of her judgement

Banal Crimes Against Humanity: The Case of Asylum Seekers in Greece

Systematic violations of the rights of unauthorized migrants on the fault lines between developed and developing countries expose the dialectic of transnationalism, a dynamic that occurs when both policy and judicial review go transnational. Three concurrent patterns define the dialectic: First, executive and judicial networks are bifurcated from each other, producing significant policies beyond the reach of judiciaries. Second, judiciaries exacerbate their bifurcation from policymaking through transnational decisions. Third, transnational law replaces absolute legal rules with pragmatic problem solving, eroding the normative basis of human rights. Although these patterns seem to show that the violations are an intractable feature of contemporary international law, this Article proposes countering them with “critical absolutism.” This approach identifies opportunities in which the dialectic can be challenged by presenting states with an existential dilemma: either treat people as humans and risk changing who you are (in terms of the composition of your population), or give up human rights and risk changing who you are (in terms of your constitutive commitments).

Dialectic of Transnationalism: Unauthorized Migration and Human Rights, 1993-2013

Systematic violations of the rights of unauthorized migrants on the fault lines between developed and
developing countries expose the dialectic of transnationalism, a dynamic that occurs when both policy and
judicial review go transnational. Three concurrent patterns define the dialectic: First, executive and judicial
networks are bifurcated from each other, producing significant policies beyond the reach of judiciaries.
Second, judiciaries exacerbate their bifurcation from policymaking through transnational decisions. Third,
transnational law replaces absolute legal rules with pragmatic problem solving, eroding the normative
basis of human rights. Although these patterns seem to show that the violations are an intractable feature
of contemporary international law, this Article proposes countering them with “critical absolutism.” This
approach identifies opportunities in which the dialectic can be challenged by presenting states with an
existential dilemma: either treat people as humans and risk changing who you are (in terms of the
composition of your population), or give up human rights and risk changing who you are (in terms of your
constitutive commitments).

/pdf/dialectic-of-transnationalism-unauthorized-migration-and-59few65h56.pdf

Itamar Mann

Papers

Humanity at Sea: Maritime Migration and the Foundations of International Law

Maritime Legal Black Holes: Migration and Rightlessness in International Law

Banal Crimes Against Humanity: The Case of Asylum Seekers in Greece

Dialectic of Transnationalism: Unauthorized Migration and Human Rights, 1993-2013

Dialectic of Transnationalism: Unauthorized Migration and Human Rights, 1993–2013