EJIL Book Discussion

Editor's Note: This is the second in a series of posts by Prof. Anderson responding to earlier posts by Brad Roth and Amrita Kapur which offered comments on Prof Anderson's 2009 EJIL article, “The Rise of International Criminal Law: Intended and Unintended Consequences,” . The first posts in the series can be found here. From where I sit, The Rise of International Criminal Law is firmly within the traditional line of American centrist views of international law.  Your results may differ, of course.  But if this article is not liberal internationalism, of the kind that still so animates the academy; neither is it skepticism as to the very category.  It is pragmatic, cautious, state-centric, and sees the category as both important but deeply fragile.  Fragile, that is, precisely because it proposes to be “law” – yet without being embedded in a social structure which would offer a society, and from there an embedded politics, and from there an embedded judiciary.  It is the universal –…