Hearing Tried People in International Criminal Justice: Sympathy for the Devil?

Abstract

By considering critics of research studies which take into consideration the ‘voice of prosecuted people’ before international criminal tribunals, this contribution develops a theoretical argument that would justify the recourse to the penal experience of prosecuted people in order to analyse the rationality and impact of international criminal justice. Our reasoning, based on conceptual landmarks drawn from the social sciences, allows us also to support a specific approach to the legal process as phenomenon. It is therefore not only addressed to sociologists, social psychologists and criminologists, but also to lawyers, who are, considering the foundations of their field, probably the most resistant to our perspective. The article expounds the necessity to establish a new approach: the respondents’ approach.

Individuals Accused of International Crimes as Delegitimized Agents of Truth

“…Such a method is particularly relevant in the case of this study, given the significance of power relations and identity concerns in social interactions such as those pertaining to criminal law (Toyoki & Brown, 2014), including the ICTY (Rauschenbach, in press). These power and identity concerns may have been all the more salient in this research context, given the stigma likely to be attributed to respondents as a result of being accused for international crimes (Devresse & Scalia, 2016;Mégret, 2014b). 14 More generally, we analyzed discourse with the premise that when respondents account for their past experiences, their narratives always constitute reconstructions and representations, which are highly contingent on the social meaning of their present subject of discussion and which reflect in their narrative positioning (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012).…”

“…Within international criminal law scholarship, there has been a recent surge in research interest for defendants. Such perspectives are situated within a broader critical perspective focused on the international criminal justice project and the dominant discourses supporting its development and practices (see Devresse & Scalia, 2016;Mégret, 2005). Scholarly interest for the perspective of the accused within international criminal courts is scarcer, even though there are indications that this field of research is developing.…”

“…One entry point is the wellacknowledged relevance of research on ordinary criminals' perspectives (Casper et al, 1988;Tyler, 2006). A classical counterargument to this perspective would be the normative distinction, operated between "ordinary" and international crimes, underlining the particular abhorrence of the latter (Devresse & Scalia, 2016). Yet, we argue that an empirical focus on defendants' perspectives in the international criminal law arena may have a relevance that is qualitatively different than for ordinary criminals in domestic trials.…”

ICTY Celebrities

“…The articles collected in this volume employ novel, multi-, and interdisciplinary perspectives, all focusing on one of the main stakeholders in the Tribunal's work: the accused (i.e., those who were tried, detained, convicted or acquitted, incarcerated, and released by the ICTY). Accused's perspectives and the questions of how these individuals define, shape, and carry on the Tribunals' legacies, quite surprisingly, have not attracted lot of attention of commentators so far (for notable exceptions, see Devresse & Scalia, 2016;Mégret, 2011;Scalia, D., Rauschenbach, M., & Staerklé, C. (2012); Rauschenbach, Staerkle, & Scalia, 2015).…”

Les accusés du Tribunal pénal international pour l’ex-Yougoslavie : entre désenchantement et résistance

“…De ce fait, depuis plusieurs années, nous tentons d'appréhender cette justice par le média d'un de ces acteurs : les accusés (acquittés et condamnés). Partant du postulat que ceux-ci ont quelque chose à nous apprendre sur la justice internationale pénale par laquelle ils ont été jugés (Devresse, Scalia, 2016), nous avons mené une série d'entretiens semi-directifs afin de mieux connaître cette justice, son fonctionnement et son impact.…”