The Expressive Limits of International Criminal Justice: Victim Trauma and Local Culture in the Iron Cage of the Law

Genocide and Victimology

“…expressivist justification for the fight against impunity for international crimes has become dominant in both policy and scholarship, arguably in response to the failure of international criminal justice to live up its deterrent and retributive promises (Houge, 2018;Sander, 2016). Therefore, a question must be asked of how Durkheimean perspectives can provide further insight over the sociological processes that animate the workings of international criminal justice.…”

Narrative expressivism: A criminological approach to the expressive function of international criminal justice

“…In light of these shortcomings, scholars contemplating the role and purpose of international criminal justice have turned to legal expressivism as a key rationale and justification for international criminal law and punishment (Sander, 2016). Legal expressivism refers to a body of justifications for criminal justice that focus on criminal law’s and criminal punishment’s ability, or potential, to confirm, consolidate and/or project shared or declared beliefs and norms, criminal justice as such being one of them (Amann, 2001; Corrias and Gordon, 2015; Sunstein, 1996).…”