8 - Building a Feminist Approach to Justice for International Criminal Law

Summary

This chapter explores whether the feminist form of justice of the Women’s Court provides the basis for developing a more emancipatory model of international justice. It considers how this feminist approach reveals the double bind of the global legal form: that legal justice is necessary but the existing legal order does not provide it. This problem reflects wider feminist and Marxist debates concerning whether law can provide the basis for emancipatory social transformation. The chapter argues for a ‘transitional’ feminist approach to international criminal law, which develops strategies to build alternative feminist forms of international justice and contributes to the struggle to create the conditions for the emergence of new forms of social organisation. It sets out how the feminist form of justice of the Women’s Court provides the basis for developing a feminist approach to international criminal justice. Drawing on feminist legal and political theory, the chapter uses the model of feminist justice to develop new legal concepts of gender-based harms, legal proceedings, subjects, and justice. It shows how these provide four key elements of an alternative conceptual framework for a feminist approach to international criminal law.