International Criminal Law: Using or Abusing Legality?(International and Comparative Criminal Justice)

This book analyses the relationship between law and violence, the utility of law over violence and whether legality as an approach has an inherent disability in addressing mass violence as a crime. The study is located within international law and assesses whether prosecuting political violence would necessarily entail an abuse of the legal process. The intention is to encourage definition of criminal aggression via legal processes laid down by the International Criminal Court, rather than giving favour to political action under the United Nations Charter. Issues discussed in the book include the controversies over the location of the crime of aggression in either law or politics, taking a legal approach to the problems outlined. Using examples from Libya, the Ivory Coast, and Kenya, the work will be of interest to those working in the areas of international criminal justice, international law, legal theory, and international relations.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Preface; The responsibility to protect civilians from political violence: locating necessity between the rule and its exception; International criminal law: from hostis to hostia humani generis; Between necessity and contingency: representing legality as a Faustian pact; Global law: from force and law to aggression and legality; The deficiencies of law before overwhelming violence; A possible methodology of judicial discourse in marshalling, interpreting, and construing aggression clauses; Exclusion and inclusion: from biopolitics to biolegality; Abuse of legality: the illegal use of the legal; Reframing criminal aggression from outside to inside law; Legality and resolving ambiguity; References; Index.

About the Author :
Edwin Bikundo is a Lecturer at the School of Law at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. He has teaching and research interests in international and comparative law and critical legal theory. His current research focuses on the role of the international criminal trial in preventing the reoccurrence of violence.

Review :
'It is only on rare occasions that one comes across work in international criminal law combing social and political theory, legal analysis and specific case studies, all in the service of a general argument about law's relation to violence. Bikundo offers unorthodox and refreshing perspectives on foundational issues and practical problems in international criminal law.' Wouter Werner, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands 'This book provides an important theoretical, highly readable and nuanced study of the legality of international criminal law and its multiple relations with the violence of law. With considerable acumen, Bikundo reconstructs the possibility of critique and our understanding of the contemporary gestures of international justice.' Peter D. Rush, University of Melbourne, Australia 'As denotes the material, Bikundo has an authorial presence at once secular and self-sacrificial, exemplary and human. The practical goal, and the sacrament in a world of immanent legality embraced as gift, is the matter of binding humanity's violence through law. An intriguing, perplexing and wonderful book.' Eugene McNamee, University of Ulster, UK