The article investigates the role of scholarly expertise in and around the international criminal courts. Building on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the article analyses the influence of different forms of scholarship by situating them in the wider ‘field’ of international criminal law. Structured by opposing poles of social worth organized around different perceptions of what is considered valuable knowledge, scholarship on international criminal law took competing forms. A dominant form of scholarship is oriented towards societal impact and caters to legal practice, while more critical perspectives adhere to norms of disinterest and autonomy embedded in academia. Formatted by the larger field of practice in which they exist and by their relative proximity to the opposing poles of societal and academic power and prestige, these perspectives structure the professional rules that govern the field and thus affect the development of its law by defining what is perceived as relevant knowledge.
Since the emergence of the idea of international criminal courts as a form of international governance between and after the two world wars, scholarly interest in the role and functionality of these institutions has been dominated by the academic disciplines of law and political science. Recently, this literature has been challenged and supplemented by an emerging sociology of international criminal courts. In contrast to previous scholarship, this sociology has taken the social dynamics that drive the development of these institutions as its object. More than simply responding to the international transformations that led to the resurgence of international criminal courts in the 1990s, the emerging sociology of these institutions was predicated on an epistemological break with previous forms of social science that created scientific innovations in the form of original research tools. Crucially, these innovations also made new types of international research objects visible to sociological scholarship.
KeywordsInternational criminal courts, international criminal justice, international sociology, sociology of law In recent decades, international criminal courts have become a central part of international political and legal governance. The establishment of the ad hoc tribunals, beginning with the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 1994, initiated a
The article investigates the diffusion of police models in the 19th century taking the Danish import of the Metropolitan Police implemented in London in 1829 as its main object of analysis. Building on the sociological framework of Pierre Bourdieu, the focal point of the analysis is how an international police model was crafted by national elites who profited from the import of a specific form of policing. In the Danish context, the import and mutation of the English role model was closely related to a transformation of the national field of power as absolutism was formally disbanded but practically folded into a new constitutional monarchy in which conservative and liberal elites coexisted.
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