1 - Introduction

Summary

International criminal justice has by many accounts a long and chequered past. Histories of that past have tended to be dominated by narratives of the institutional development of international criminal justice. The great diplomatic conferences, jurisdictional initiatives and adoption of treaties that have accompanied its existence at regular intervals are emphasized. The historical-legal narrative that dominates the scholarship is that of linear evolution from custom to conventions, noble plans to concrete institutions, from ad hoc to permanent. The undertone often is that of celebration of the progress accomplished, but also perhaps more problematically one where the past is seen to merely foreshadow the present and thus read in that light. Much legal scholarship, perhaps understandably given its emphasis on legal and institutional form, errs closely to this genre.