The rule of law as a marketing tool: The International Criminal Court and the branding of global justice

In the Absence of the Rule of Law: Everyday Lawyering, Dignity and Resistance in Myanmar’s ‘Disciplined Democracy’

“…As McAuliffe (2013) has highlighted, more persuasive recent rule of law scholarship has emphasized the inevitable compromises contained in such a protean concept. There is now a much greater awareness of how the term can be hijacked for neo-colonialist (Brown, 2017) or globalized neo-liberal corporatist ends (Schwöbel-Patel, 2018).…”

Affective Justice—The International Criminal Court and the Pan-Africanist Pushback. By Kamari Maxine Clarke. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2019. 384 pp. $29.95 paperback

“…Clarke also turns to economics and marketing to detail the “symbolic construction of the ‘victim’ fetish” (114) which she notably develops within the context of the #BringBackOurGirlsCampaign (Chapter 3) by demonstrating how this hashtag campaign proceeded to the replacement of the victims' bodies in a way that fitted the “contemporary capitalist logic” (120) and that ultimately “represent[ed] a fetishization of the ‘victim’” (127). The exploration of this campaign, admittedly triggered by humanitarianism and consideration for the victims, via a multiple lens that brings together economics, consumerism, advertising principles and aesthetics, is among the most thought‐provoking features of Affective Justice and touches upon a very contemporary issue: the marketing of international criminal justice (Schwöbel‐Patel, 2018). Clarke's examination of how the celebrities who participated in this campaign substituted their own physical image to that of the actual victims reflects how the condemnation of mass atrocities has gradually become not only a Hollywood trend but perhaps also a Western trademark through the replacement—and thus appropriation—of the victims' bodies by that of the advertising celebrities.…”