Despite the growth in international criminal courts and tribunals, the majority of cases concerning international criminal law are prosecuted at the domestic level. This means that both international and domestic courts have to contend with a plethora of relevant, but often contradictory, judgments by international institutions and by other domestic courts. This book provides a detailed investigation into the impact this pluralism has had on international criminal law and procedure, and examines the key problems which arise from it. The work identifies the various interpretations of the concept of pluralism and discusses how it manifests in a broad range of aspects of international criminal law and practice. These include substantive jurisdiction, the definition of crimes, modes of individual criminal responsibility for international crimes, sentencing, fair trial rights, law of evidence, truth-finding, and challenges faced by both international and domestic courts in gathering, testing and evaluating evidence. Authored by leading practitioners and academics in the field, the book employs pluralism as a methodological tool to advance the debate beyond the classic view of 'legal pluralism' leading to a problematic fragmentation of the international legal order. It argues instead that pluralism is a fundamental and indispensable feature of international criminal law which permeates it on several levels: through multiple legal regimes and enforcement fora, diversified sources and interpretations of concepts, and numerous identities underpinning the law and practice. The book addresses the virtues and dangers of pluralism, reflecting on the need for, and prospects of, harmonization of international criminal law around a common grammar. It ultimately brings together the theories of legal pluralism, the comparative law discourse on legal transplants, harmonization, and convergence, and the international legal debate on fragmentation to show where pluralism and divergence will need to be accepted as regular, and even beneficial, features of international criminal justice.

"Abstract Global legal pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the twenty-first century"--

This book explores how the unique historical development of Islamic Shari’a criminal law alongside English common law in northern Nigeria has created a hybridised criminal legal system through a pluralist dynamic of mutual accommodation. It studies how this system may potentially be accommodated by the International Criminal Court. The work examines how this could be accommodated through the current understanding and operation of complementarity, and that it could ultimately prove to be preferable in encouraging the Shari’a courts to exercise criminal justice over the radical insurgents in northern Nigeria. These courts would have the unprecedented ability to combine binding adjudicative judgments together with religious interpretation and guidance, which can directly combat the predominantly unchallenged domain of ideology by extremist actors. It is submitted that these pluralist perspectives are timely and welcome, given the undeniably Western European foundations of modern International Criminal Law. In exploring such potential avenues, our shared understanding of modern international criminal justice is widened to necessarily include other stakeholders beyond its Western founders. It is the aim and hope that such interactions and engagements with non-Western traditions and cultures will lead to a greater shared ownership of the international criminal justice project, which will only strengthen the global fight against impunity. The book will be essential reading for academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of International Criminal Law, Legal Pluralism, Islamic Shari’a Law, Nigeria, and religiously-inspired violence.

This book explores how notions of justice are negotiated through everyday micropractices and grassroots contestations of those practices.

This volume deals with the tension between unity and diversification which has gained a central place in the debate under the label of ‘fragmentation’. It explores the meaning, articulation and risks of this phenomenon in a specific area: International Criminal Justice. It brings together established and fresh voices who analyse different sites and contestations of this concept, as well as its context and specific manifestations in the interpretation and application of International Criminal Law. The volume thereby connects discourse on ‘fragmentation’ with broader inquiry on the merits and discontents of legal pluralism in ‘Public International Law’.

This pioneering book explores the intersections of law and culture at the International Criminal Court (ICC), offering insights into how notions of culture affect the Court’s legal foundations, functioning and legitimacy, both in theory and in practice.

We live in a world of legal pluralism, where a single act or actor is potentially regulated by multiple legal or quasi-legal regimes imposed by state, substate, transnational, supranational and nonstate communities. Navigating these spheres of complex overlapping legal authority is confusing and we cannot expect territorial borders to solve all these problems. At the same time, those hoping to create one universal set of legal rules are also likely to be disappointed by the sheer variety of human communities and interests. Instead, we need an alternative jurisprudence, one that seeks to create or preserve spaces for productive interaction among multiple, overlapping legal systems by developing procedural mechanisms, institutions and practices that aim to manage, without eliminating, the legal pluralism we see around us. Global Legal Pluralism provides a broad synthesis across a variety of legal doctrines and academic disciplines and offers a novel conceptualization of law and globalization.