This volume considers a variety of key issues pertaining to the rights of defendants and victims at International Criminal Courts (ICTs) and explores how best to balance and enhance the rights of both in order to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of international criminal proceedings. The rights of victims are becoming an increasingly important issue at ICTs. Yet, at the same time, this has to be achieved without having a detrimental impact upon on the rights of the defence and the efficiency of the courts. This book provides analyses of issues on the rights of both the accused and the victims. By discussing matters concerning these two pivotal actors in international criminal justice within the same volume, the work highlights that there are intrinsic and intense conflicting and converging relationships between victims and the accused, particularly in terms of their rights. While most of the chapters focus mainly on either the accused or the victims, others discuss both at the same time. The work strikes a fine balance between, on the one hand, classic topics on the rights of the accused and the rights of the victims and, on the other, topics which have been largely unexplored and/or which require new angles or perspectives. Additionally, there are some chapters which approach both the rights of the accused and the rights of the victims in new contexts and/or under novel perspectives. The book as a whole provides a discussion of the two sides of this important coin of international criminal justice. The work will be an essential resource for academics, practitioners and students with an interest in the field of international criminal law. It will also be of interest to human rights scholars who are working with the rights of victims and the accused.

A universal criminal court : the emergence of an idea -- The global civil society campaign -- The victory : the independent prosecutor -- The defeat : no universal jurisdiction -- The controversy : gender and forced pregnancy -- The missed chance : banning weapons -- A global civil society achievement : why rejoice?

ÔInternational criminal justice indeed is a crowded field. But this edited collection stands well above the crowd. And it does so with dignity. Through interdisciplinary analysis, the editors skillfully turn shibboleths into intrigues. Theirs is a kaleidoscopic project that scales a gamut of issues: from courtroom discipline, to gender, to the defense, to history. Through vivid deployment of unconventional methods, this edited collection unsettles conventional wisdom. It thereby pushes law and policy toward heartier horizons.Õ Ð Mark A. Drumbl, Washington and Lee University, School of Law, US International criminal justice as a discipline throws up numerous conceptual issues, engaging disciplines such as law, politics, history, sociology and psychology, to name but a few. This book addresses themes around international criminal justice from a mixture of traditional and more radical perspectives. While law, and in particular international law, is at the heart of much of the discussion around this topic, history, sociology and politics are invariably infused and, in some aspects of international criminal justice, are predominant elements. Fundamentally the exploration concerns questions of coherence and legitimacy, which are foundational to both the content and application of the discipline, and the book charts an illuminating path through these diverse perspectives. The contributions in this book come from some of the eminent scholars and practitioners in the area, and will provide some profound insight into and an enriched understanding of international criminal justice, helping to advance the field of study. This ambitious and necessary book will appeal to academics and students of international criminal law, international criminal justice, international law, transitional justice and comparative criminal law, as well as practitioners of international criminal law.

International Practices of Criminal Justice: Social and Legal Perspectives examines the practitioners, practices, and institutions that are transforming the relationship between criminal justice and international governance. The book links two dimensions of international criminal justice, by analyzing the fields of international criminal law and international police cooperation. Although often thought of separately, each of these fields presents criminal justice as a governance method for resolving international challenges and crises. By focusing on examples from international criminal tribunals, transitional justice, transnational crime, and transnational policing and prosecution, the contributors to this collection all examine how criminal justice is unmoored from the state, while also attending to the struggles and challenges that emerge when criminal justice is used as a form of international action. International Practices of Criminal Justice: Social and Legal Perspectives breaks new ground in criminology, international legal studies and the sociology of law, and will be of interest to students, scholars, and practitioners across a wide array of fields in criminal justice, international law, and international governance.

The book sets out in-depth studies of consensual case dispositions in the UK, examining how plea bargaining has developed and spread in England and Wales. It also goes on to discusses in detail the problems that this practise poses for the rule of law by avoiding procedural safe-guards. The book draws on empirical research in its examination of the absence of informal settlements in the former GDR, offering a unique insight into criminal procedure in a socialist legal system that has been little studied.

This book sets out an agenda to transform international criminal trials and the delivery of international criminal justice to victim communities through collaboration of currently competing paradigms. It reflects a transformation of thinking about the comparative analysis of the trial process, and seeks to advance the boundaries of international criminal justice through wider access and inclusivity in an environment of rights protection.Collaborative justice is advanced as providing the future context of international criminal trials. The book's radical dimension is its argument for the harmonization of restorative and retributive justice within the international criminal trial. The focus is initially on the trial process, a key symbol of developing international styles of justice. It examines theoretical models and political applications of criminal justice through detailed empirical analysis, in order to explore the underlying relationship of theory and empirical study, applying the outcome in theory testing and policy evaluation in several different jurisdictions. The book injects a significant comparative dimension into the study of international criminal justice.This is achieved through searching the traditional foundations of internationalism in justice by employing an original methodology to enable a multi-dimensional exploration of contexts (local, regional and global), so recognising the importance of difference within an agenda suggesting synthesis.The book argues for a concept of international trial within a 'rights paradigm', understood against different procedural traditions and practices, and provides a detailed description of trials and trial decision-making in various jurisdictions. Transforming International Criminal Justice also sets out to develop effective research strategies as part of its interrogation of specific trial narratives and meanings in contemporary legal cultures. Key themes are those of internationalisation, fair trial and the exercise of discretion in justice resolutions (sentencing in particular), and the lay/professional relationship and its dynamics. Finally, the book provides a searching critique of the relevance of existing criminology and legal sociology in relation to international criminal justice, and speculates on trial transformation and the merger of retributive and restorative international criminal justice. comparative analysis of the criminal trial process internationallyargues for harmonization of retributive and restorative justice within the international criminal trialsets out an agenda to transform international criminal trials and the delivery of international criminal justice to victim communities

North American law has been transformed in ways unimaginable before 9/11. Laws now authorise and courts have condoned indefinite detention without charge on secret evidence, mass secret surveillance, and targeted killing of U.S. citizens, suggesting a shift in the cultural currency of a liberal form of legality to authoritarian legality. This book demonstrates that extreme measures have been consistently embraced in politics, scholarship, and public opinion in a specific belief that 9/11 was the harbinger of a new order of terror.