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Identity politics and hybrid tribunals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2020

Aaron Fichtelberg
Aaron Fichtelberg*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, NewarkDE19716, USA
*
Email: afichte@udel.edu
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Abstract

Many of the conflicts that have led to the creation of hybrid tribunals were identity-based conflicts – people who identified as members of one tribe, race, ethnicity, or religion used these distinctions as grounds to attack and persecute another group who often responded in kind. This reality means that the criminal justice processes that take place in the wake of such conflicts must take issues of identity seriously to be effective. This article uses the notion of framing contests to examine different identity-based responses to international justice. Defenders of the tribunals seek to portray them as impartial observers while critics paint them as illegitimate outsiders. Because hybrid tribunals have identity considerations as features built into them, they are better suited to promote their own legitimacy in these framing contests. These features include the personnel they use, the witnesses they call, the strategies their prosecutors deploy, and their local outreach programmes. Each of these tools can be used to frame the tribunal as a legitimate means to promote criminal justice and thereby advance the values of transitional justice.

Keywords

hybrid tribunalsidentity politicsinternational criminal justicesociology of lawtransitional justice
Type
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 993 - 1014
Copyright
© Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2020

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank everybody at the Hybrid Justice Workshop, especially Kirsten Ainley, Mark Kersten, and Kerstin Carlson.

References

1 For a general overview of these tribunals see A. Fichtelberg, Hybrid Tribunals: A Comparative Examination (2015).

2 By ‘ownership’ I mean, ‘The degree to which the national and international components “buy in” to the process [of criminal justice]. Ultimately, the degree to which each accepts and acknowledges its share of ownership in the tribunal will affect the allocation of responsibility, and thus accountability, within and for the criminal process.’ P. Rapoza, ‘Hybrid Criminal Tribunals and the Concept of Ownership’, (2011) 21 American University International Law Review 525, at 526.

3 It is worth noting that this definition (and the analysis in this article more generally) does not fit neatly with all the tribunals that are commonly described as hybrids. The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, located in The Hague and staffed exclusively by judges from the broader international community, would not easily fit the argument presented here.

4 M. Kersten, ‘As the Pendulum Swings – The Revival of the Hybrid Tribunal’, Justice In Conflict, 26 April 2017, available at justiceinconflict.org/2017/04/26/as-the-pendulum-swings-the-revival-of-the-hybrid-tribunal-new-paper/.

5 G. Yacoubian, ‘The Efficacy of International Criminal Justice: Evaluating the Aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide’, (1999) 161 World Affairs 186, at 190. See also H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (2012), 103–4.

6 L. Raub, ‘Positioning Hybrid Tribunals in International Criminal Justice’, (2009) 41 NYU JILAP 1013, at 1030.

7 P. Vinck and P. Pham, ‘Ownership and Participation in Transitional Justice Mechanisms: A Sustainable Human Development Perspective from Eastern DRC’, (2008) 2 International Journal of Transitional Justice 398.

8 See, for example, V. Hussain, ‘Sustaining Judicial Rescues: The Role of Outreach and Capacity-Building Efforts in War Crimes Tribunals’, (2005) 45 VJIL 547.

9 One exception is H. Hobbs, ‘Hybrid Tribunals and the Composition of the Court: In Search of Sociological Legitimacy’, (2016) 16 CJIL 482.

10 E. Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (1974).

11 T. R. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law (1990).

12 Ibid., at 26.

13 E. Goffman, supra note 10.

14 Ibid., at 22.

15 R. M. Entman, ‘Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm’, (1993) 43 Journal of Communication 51, at 52.

16 W. Gamson and A. Modigliani, ‘The changing culture of affirmative action’, in R. Braungart and M. Braungart (eds.), Research in Political Sociology (1987), 137, at 143.

17 Collective action frames interpret the world but in ways that are ‘intended to mobilize potential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists’: D. A. Snow and R. D. Benford, ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance and Participant Mobilization’, (1988) 1 International Social Movement Research 197, at 198.

18 M. N. Zald, ‘Culture, ideology, and strategic framing’, in D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy and M. N. Zald (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (1996), 261.

19 C. Ryan, Prime Time Activism: Media Strategies for Grassroots Organizing (1999), 75–91.

20 R. D. Benford and D. A. Snow, ‘Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment’, (2000) 26 Annual Review of Sociology 611.

21 Ibid., at 615.

22 J. Clark, ‘International War Crimes Tribunals and the Challenge of Outreach’, (2009) 9 International Criminal Law Review 99.

23 See M. Milanović, ‘The Impact of the ICTY on the Former Yugoslavia: An Anticipatory Post-Mortem’, (2016) 110(2) American Journal of International Law 233; K. Moghalu, ‘Image and Reality of War Crimes Justice: External Perceptions of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’, (2002) 26 Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 21.

24 For a modern history of disruptive trials see M. Scharf, ‘Chaos in the Courtroom: Controlling Disruptive Defendants and Contumacious Counsel in War Crimes Trials’, (2007) 39 Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 155; P. Lahav, ‘Theater in the Courtroom: The Chicago Conspiracy Trial’, (2004) 16 Law and Literature 381.

25 M. Scharf, ibid., at 154.

26 M. Glasius and T. Meijers, ‘Constructions of Legitimacy: The Charles Taylor Trial’, (2012) 6 International Journal of Transitional Justice 229, at 231.

27 L. Levenson, ‘Courtroom Demeanor: The Theater of the Courtroom’, (2008) 92 Minnesota Law Review 573.

28 See, for example, J. Subotić, ‘Legitimacy, Scope, and Conflicting Claims on the ICTY: In the Aftermath of Gotovina, Haradinaj and Perišić’, (2014) 13 Journal of Human Rights 170 (‘The reports on domestic trials are sparse, incomplete, and largely dependent on whether the case is of crimes by or of Serbs, with the latter receiving significantly more attention. There is almost no coverage of the victims, with news stories focusing exclusively and often quite sensationally, on the perpetrators.’).

29 C. Calhoun, ‘Social Theory and the Politics of Identity’, in C. Calhoun (ed.) Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (1994), 21; M. Milanovic, supra note 23.

30 R. Weitzer and S. A. Tuch, ‘Racially Biased Policing: Determinants of Citizen Perceptions’, (2005) 83 Social Forces 1009; N. Ghandnoosh, ‘Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies’, The Sentencing Project, 2014, available at www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Race-and-Punishment.pdf.

31 C. Mackinnon, Towards a Feminist Theory of the State (1989); P. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights (1991).

32 Here I am defining ethnic conflict as, ‘collective behavior that uses some set of ethnic markers … as the basis for membership in a group that also articulates a grievance (such as a protest against discrimination) or is acting against a specific ethnic … population’. S. Olzak, ‘Ethnic Collective Action in Contemporary Urban United States -- Data on Conflicts and Protests (1954–1992)’, ICPSR, 4 March 2015, available at www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/34341.

33 Even if the defendant acted out of base self-interest, it is in her interest to ‘wrap herself in a flag’ and claim to have acted in the name of her people.

34 B. Harden, ‘Milosevic Is Accused, but All of Serbia Is on Trial’, The New York Times, 1 April 2001, available at www.nytimes.com/2001/04/01/weekinreview/the-world-milosevic-is-accused-but-all-of-serbia-is-on-trial.html. See also M. Scharf, ‘The Legacy of the Milosevic Trial’, (2002) 37 New England Law Review 915.

35 C. Schmit, The Concept of the Political (1932); O. Kirshheimer, Political Justice: The Use of Legal Procedure for Political Ends (1961).

36 S. Nouwen and W. Werner, ‘Doing Justice to the Political: The International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan’, (2011) 21 EJIL 941, at 946.

37 Ibid., at 963.

38 I. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (2011), 100. See also R. Teitel, ‘The Universal and the Particular in International Criminal Justice’, (1998–1999) 30 Columbia Human Rights Law Review 285.

39 G. H. Mead, Mind, Self, & Society (1967).

40 M. Steinitz, ‘The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as the Theater: The Social Negotiation of the Moral Authority of International Law’, (2007) 5 JILP 1, at 7. For a deconstructionist take on this see R. Cover, ‘Violence and the Word’, (1986) 95 Yale Law Journal 1601.

41 For a dramaturgical analysis of an international court see Steinitz, ibid.

42 W. Gamson, ‘Constructing Social Protest’, in H. Johnston and B. Klandermans (eds.), Social Movements and Culture (1995), 85, at 91.

43 For a fascinating discussion of impartiality as a western construct see L. Siew-Fang, ‘The Construct of Neutrality and Impartiality in Chinese Mediation’, (2011) 22 Australasian Dispute Resolution Journal 118. In the context of international justice see P. Uvin and C. Mironko, ‘Western and Local Approaches to Justice in Rwanda’, (2003) 9 Global Governance 219.

44 See, for example, B. Hudson, ‘Beyond White Man’s Justice: Race, Gender and Justice in Late Modernity’, (2006) 10 Theoretical Criminology 29. For a history of colonialist ideology in criminal justice (in particular in relation to conceptions of impartiality) see D. Dalgleish, ‘Pre-Colonial Criminal Justice in West Africa: Eurocentric Thought Versus Africentric Evidence’, (2005) 1 African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 55. For a feminist critique see I. M. Young, ‘Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory’, (1985) 5 PRAXIS International 381.

45 T. Kelsall, ‘Politics, anti-politics, international justice: language and power in the Special Court for Sierra Leone’, (2006) 32 Review of International Studies 587.

46 Ibid., at 594.

47 Ibid., at 593.

48 Ibid., at 595.

49 Z. Suvakovic, ‘The ICTY was meant to be a beacon of international justice but now its credibility is on the line’, Al Jazeera, 28 January 2014, available at www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/politics-justice-at-hague-2014121141359532592.html.

50 M. Schrag, ‘Lessons Learned from ICTY Experience’, (2004) 2 Journal of International Criminal Justice 427, at 434.

51 T. Judah, ‘Serbia backs Milosevic in trial by TV’, The Guardian, 2002, available at www.theguardian.com/world/2002/mar/03/warcrimes.balkans.

52 The main exceptions to this rule are the Extraordinary African Chambers (based in Senegal) and the Kosovo War Crimes Chamber established in The Hague. Further, the trial for Charles Taylor at the SCSL was moved to The Hague for security reasons.

53 C. Aptel, ‘International and Hybrid Criminal Tribunals: Reconciling or Stigmatizing?’, in A. Paige (ed.), Identities in Transition: Challenges for Transitional Justice in Divided Societies (2010), 149, at 166.

54 M. Esman, ‘Public administration and conflict management in plural societies: The case of representative bureaucracy’, (1999) 19 Public Administration and Development 353, at 365. See also T. Abe, ‘Perceptions of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal among Cambodians: Implications of the Proceedings of Public Forums Held by a Local NGO’, (2013) 21 South East Asia Research 5.

55 For more on the importance of the representation of different groups see S. Krislov, Representative Bureaucracy (1974).

56 H. Hobbs ‘Hybrid Tribunals and the Composition of the Court: In Search of Sociological Legitimacy’, (2016) 16 Chicago Journal of International Law 482, at 496. Internal citation is from H. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (1967), 8–9.

57 E. Higonnet, ‘Restructuring Hybrid Courts: Local Empowerment and National Criminal Justice Reform’, (2005) Student Scholarship Papers, at 11.

58 For a more in-depth discussion of the staffing of the SCLS’s Prosecutor’s Office see G. Townsend, ‘Chapter 5: Structure and Management’, in L. Reydams, J. Wouters, and C. Ryngaert (eds.), International Prosecutors (2012), 171.

59 Art. 15(4) of the 2002 Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

60 ‘The Special Court for Sierra Leone: The First Eighteen Months’, (2004) International Center for Transitional Justice, available at www.ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ-SierraLeone-Special-Court-2004-English.pdf.

61 Glasius and Meijers, supra note 26.

62 C. Brants and K. Klep, ‘History-Telling, Collective Memory, and the Victim-Witness’, (2013) 7 International Journal of Conflict and Violence 36. A similar observation is made, albeit more critically, by M.-B. Dembour and E. Haslam, ‘Silencing Hearings? Victim-Witnesses at War Crimes Trials’, (2004) 15 EJIL 151.

63 M. A. Rasmussen, ‘Rules of Evidence for the International Criminal Court’, (1995) 64 Nordic Journal of International Law 275.

64 G. Williams, ‘Dangerous Victims: On Some Political Dangers of Vicarious Claims to Victimhood’, (2008) 9 Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory 77; D. Bar-Tal et al., ‘A sense of self-perceived collective victimhood in intractable conflicts’, (2009) 91 International Review of the Red Cross 229.

65 An exception can be found at the ECCC, where members of the Prosecutor’s Office have publicly decried the misconduct they observed there. See A. Buncombe, ‘Prosecutor quits Killing Fields war crimes trial’, The Independent, 25 June 2009, available at www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/prosecutor-quits-killing-fields-war-crimes-trial-1718054.html.

66 P. Vinck and P. Pham, ‘Ownership and Participation in Transitional Justice Mechanisms: A Sustainable Human Development Perspective from Eastern DRC’, (2008) 2 International Journal of Transitional Justice 398.

67 A. Fichtelberg, ‘The International Criminal Court and the Ethics of Selective Justice’, in B. Griech-Polelle (ed.), The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and its Policy Consequences Today (2009).

68 J. Cockayne, ‘Commentary’, in A. Klip and G. Sluiter (eds.), Annotated Leading Cases of International Tribunals, Vol. 9: The Special Court for Sierra Leone (2006), at 392.

69 For more on the prosecutorial strategy at the SCSL see Fichtelberg, supra note 1, at 92–7.

70 Milanović, supra note 23; Clark, supra note 22. For a critique of the outreach at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda see V. Peskin, ‘Courting Rwanda: The Promises and Pitfalls of the ICTR Outreach Programme’, (2005) 3 Journal of International Criminal Justice 950; D. Arzt, ‘Views on the Ground: The Local Perception of International Criminal Tribunals in the Former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone’, (2006) 603 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 226.

71 www.ictj.org.

72 J. Lincoln, Transitional Justice, Peace and Accountability: Outreach and the Role of International Courts after Conflict (2011).

73 Peskin, supra note 70.

74 D. Cohen, ‘Hybrid Justice in East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia: Lessons Learned and Prospects for the Future’, (2007) 43 Stanford Journal of International Law 1, at 6. See also N. Pentelovitch, ‘Seeing justice done: the importance of prioritizing outreach efforts at international criminal tribunals’, (2008) 39 Georgetown Journal of International Law 445.

75 D. Cubie, The International Legal Protection of Persons in Humanitarian Crises: Exploring the Acquis Humanitaire (2017), 15.

76 R. Kerr and J. Lincoln, ‘The Special Court for Sierra Leone - Outreach, Legacy and Impact: Final Report’ (2008), at 18, available at www.rscsl.org/Documents/slfinalreport.pdf.

77 S. Ford, ‘How Special Is the Special Court’s Outreach Section?’, in C. Jalloh (ed.), The Sierra Leone Special Court and its Legacy: The Impact for Africa and International Criminal Law (2013), 505, at 510.

78 D. Crane, ‘White Man’s Justice: Applying International Justice after Regional Third World Conflicts’, (2005–2006) 27 Cardozo Law Review 1683. See also C. Jalloh, ‘Regionalizing International Criminal Law?’, (2009) 9 International Criminal Law Review 445.

79 A. Sesay, Reaching Out: The Successes and Failures of the Special Court of Sierra Leone (2012), 69.

80 Ford, supra note 77, at 524.

81 Clark, supra note 22, at 109.

82 Ibid., at 106.

83 For a discussion of this in the context of Indian bureaucracy see Esman, supra note 54. For a broader study of the empirical confirmations of this claim see M. Bradbury and E. Kellough, ‘Representative Bureaucracy: Assessing the Evidence on Active Representation’, (2011) 41 American Review of Public Administration 157.

84 Hobbs, supra note 56, at 494.

85 M. Kostić, ‘Public Opinion Survey in Serbia Sheds Light on ICTY Legacy’, Humanitarian Law Center, 22 January 2018, available at www.hlc-rdc.org/?p=34717&lang=de.

86 For a useful study of this issue in the Serbian context see J. Obradovic-Wochnik, ‘Knowledge, Acknowledgement and Denial in Serbia’s Responses to the Srebrenica Massacre’, (2009) 17 Journal of Contemporary European Studies 61.

87 Kelsall, supra note 45, at 589.

88 Ibid., at 601.

89 For an account of this in relation to the Milosevic trial see Scharf supra note 34, at 918.

90 See, for example, J. Meernick, ‘Victor’s Justice or the Law? Judging and Punishing at the International Criminal Tribunal for The Former Yugoslavia’, (2003) 47 Journal of Conflict Resolution 140 (‘Of critical importance to the ICTY and international criminal law in general is the development of impartial criteria for judging those accused of international crimes.’).

91 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rule of Law Tools for Post-Conflict States: Maximizing the Legacy of Hybrid Courts (2008), at 11, available at www.un.org/ruleoflaw/blog/document/rule-of-the-law-tools-for-post-conflict-states-maximizing-the-legacy-of-hybrid-courts/.