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Deliberation and Global Criminal Justice: Juries in the International Criminal Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

John Gastil ,
Colin J. Lingle  and
Eugene P. Deess
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Abstract

The jury system is one of the oldest deliberative democratic bodies, and it has a robust historical record spanning hundreds of years in numerous countries. As scholars and civic reformers envision a democratic global public sphere and international institutions, we advocate for the inclusion of juries of lay citizens as a means of administering justice and promoting deliberative norms. Focusing specifically on the case of the International Criminal Court, we show how juries could bolster that institution's legitimacy by promoting public trust, increasing procedural fairness, foregrounding deliberative reasoning, and embodying democratic values. Juries would present novel logistical, philosophical, and legal problems, but we show how each of these might be overcome to make juries a viable element of global governance.

Type
Symposium on Global Democracy
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 69 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2010

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References

Notes

1 Valerie P. Hans, “Jury Systems Around the World,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 4 (2008), pp. 275–97.

2 For an overview, see Ned Crosby and Doug Nethercutt, “Citizens Juries: Creating a Trustworthy Voice of the People,” in John Gastil and Peter Levine, eds., The Deliberative Democracy Handbook (San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 2005), pp. 111–19.

3 The strong exception here is Amy Powell, whose law review essay on the subject was invaluable in developing our argument. See Amy Powell, “Three Angry Men: Juries in International Criminal Adjudication,” New York University Law Review 79 (2004), pp. 2341–80.

4 William L. Dwyer, In the Hands of the People (New York: St. Martin's, 2002).

5 Julie Flint and Alex de Waal, “To Put Justice Before Peace Spells Disaster for Sudan,” Guardian, March 6, 2009; available at http:\\www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/06/sudan-war-crimes.

6 Michael J. Struett, “The Legitimacy of the International Criminal Court,” in Michael J. Struett, The Politics of Constructing the International Criminal Court: NGOs, Discourse, and Agency (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 155, 177.

7 Richard Overy, “The Nuremberg Trials: International Law in the Making,” in Philippe Sands, ed., From Nuremberg to The Hague: The Future of International Criminal Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 2.

8 Powell, “Three Angry Men,” p. 2376.

9 These four criteria are adapted from Allen Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane, “The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions,” Ethics & International Affairs 20, no. 4 (2006), pp. 405–37.

10 Ibid., p. 417.

11 Ibid., p. 422.

12 Aaron Fichtelberg, “Democratic Legitimacy and the International Criminal Court: A Liberal Defence,” Journals of International Criminal Justice 4, no. 4 (2006), pp. 765–785.

13 Gerry Simpson, “Politics, Sovereignty, Remembrance,” and Dominic McGoldrick, “The Legal and Political Significance of a Permanent International Criminal Court,” in Dominic McGoldrick, P. J. Rowe, and Eric Donnelly, eds., The Permanent International Criminal Court: Legal and Policy Issues (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2004), pp. 48–51 and 459–60, respectively.

14 Hans Köchler, Global Justice or Global Revenge? International Criminal Justice at the Crossroads (Vienna: Springer-Verlag, 2003), pp. 9–13.

15 Fichtelberg, “Democratic Legitimacy and the International Criminal Court,” p. 782; see also Dominic McGoldrick, “Criminal Trials Before International Tribunals: Legality and Legitimacy,” in !McGoldrick, Rowe, and Donnelly, eds., The Permanent International Criminal Court, p. 10.

16 Fichtelberg, “Democratic Legitimacy and the International Criminal Court,” p. 767.

17 McGoldrick, “The Legal and Political Significance of a Permanent International Criminal Court,” p. 455.

18 Benjamin N. Schiff, Building the International Criminal Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 142.

19 Dwyer, In the Hands of the People, p. 32.

20 John Gastil, Perry Deess, Phil Weiser, and Cindy Simmons, The Jury and Democracy: How Jury Deliberation Promotes Civic Engagement and Political Participation (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

21 Buchanan and Keohane, “The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions,” p. 417.

22 Michael J. Struett, “The Politics of Discursive Legitimacy: Understanding the Dynamics and Implication of Prosecutorial Discretion at the International Criminal Court,” in Steven C. Roach, ed., Governance, Order, and the International Criminal Court (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 107–10.

23 See Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998).

24 Simone Chambers, “Deliberative Democratic Theory,” Annual Review of Political Science 6 (2003), p. 308.

25 John Gastil, Political Communication and Deliberation (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2008), pp. 8–10.

26 John S. Dryzek, “Legitimacy and Economy in Deliberative Democracy,” Political Theory 29 (2001), pp. 651–69. Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), offered an early, influential analysis of the relationship between system legitimacy and public discourse.

27 See Neil Vidmar, “A Historical and Comparative Perspective on the Common Law Jury,” in Neil Vidmar, ed., World Jury Systems (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 1–52;and Neil Vidmar and Valerie Hans, American Juries: The Verdict (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2007).

28 For an overview of such criticisms, see Powell, “Three Angry Men,” pp. 2353–56.

29 Cass R. Sunstein, “The Law of Group Polarization,” Journal of Political Philosophy 10 (2002), pp. 175–95.

30 Harry Kalven, Jr., and Hans Zeisel, The American Jury (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966).

31 Lynn Sanders, “Against Deliberation,” Political Theory 25 (1997), pp. 347–76.

32 Andrea Hickerson and John Gastil, “Assessing the Difference Critique of Deliberation: Gender, Emotion, and the Jury Experience,” Communication Theory 18 (2008), pp. 281–303.

33 For thorough reviews of the record of criminal and civil jury deliberation, see Vidmar and Hans, American Juries; and Valerie P. Hans, Business on Trial: The Civil Jury and Corporate Responsibility (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000). See also Vidmar, “A Historical and Comparative Perspective on the Common Law Jury”; and Gastil, Political Communication and Deliberation, chap. 6.

34 See Gastil et al., The Jury and Democracy; and Vidmar and Hans, American Juries.

35 Buchanan and Keohane, “The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions,” p. 417.

36 Ibid., p. 433.

37 Madeline Morris, “The Democratic Dilemma of the International Criminal Court,” Buffalo Criminal Law 5 (2002), p. 600.

38 For a discussion of this criticism, see Catherine Lu, “The ICC as an Institution of Moral Regeneration,” in Michael Milde, Richard Vernon, and Joanna Harrington, eds., Bringing Power to Justice? The Prospects of the International Criminal Court (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006), p. 195.

39 Lyn Carson and Brian Martin, Random Selection in Politics (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999).

40 For the complete text of this bill, see gov.oregonlive.com/bill/HB2895. The nongovernmental organization Healthy Democracy Oregon, which championed the CIR through the Oregon legislature, is likely to be the organizer of the panels. See http:\\www.healthydemocracyoregon.org.

41 In 2011, California will create a redistricting panel that has a random-selection element as part of a complex citizen-panel selection process. This was established by Proposition 11, which passed in the 2008 general election. See http:\\www.ca.lwv.org/lwvc/action/redistrict/index.html.

42 See Gastil and Levine, eds., The Deliberative Democracy Handbook, esp. chaps. 5–8.

43 Hauke Brunkhorst, “Globalising Democracy Without a State: Weak Public, Strong Public, Global Constitutionalism,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31 (2002), pp. 675–90.

44 John Gerring, “Global Justice as an Empirical Question,” PS: Political Science & Politics 40, no. 1 (2007), pp. 67–77.

45 Köchler, Global Justice or Global Revenge?, p. 1.

46 Adriaan Bos, “The International Criminal Court: A Perspective,” in Roy S. Lee, ed., The International Criminal Court: The Making of the Rome Statute—Issues, Negotiations, Results (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1999), p. 468.

47 The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, art. 121, p. 85; available at http:\\www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/EA9AEFF7-5752-4F84-BE94-0A655EB30E16/0/Rome_Statute_English.pdf.

48 International Criminal Court, “Victims and Witnesses Protection”; available at http:\\www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/Structure+of+the+Court/Protection/Victims+and+Witness+Unit.htm (accessed December 16, 2009).

49 On juries in particular, see Hickerson and Gastil, “Assessing the Difference Critique of Deliberation.” For examples of how to handle these challenges, see the methods in Gastil and Levine, eds., The Deliberative Democracy Handbook.

50 See Vidmar and Hans, American Juries.

51 ICC guidelines read, “Participation before the Court may occur at various stages of proceedings and may take different forms, although it will be up to the judges to give directions as to the timing and manner of participation.” International Criminal Court, “Victims and Witnesses”; available at http:\\www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/Structure+of+the+Court/Victims (accessed December 16, 2009).

52 Köchler, Global Justice or Global Revenge?, p. 4.

53 Anthony Costi, “Hybrid Tribunals as a Viable Transitional Justice Mechanism to Combat Impunity in Post-Conflict Situations,” New Zealand Universities Law Review 22, no. 2 (2006), pp. 213–39.

54 Civil and criminal juries use different decision rules, and different rules are sometimes used to distinguish low- from high-stakes criminal cases (e.g., misdemeanors versus felonies). See Vidmar and Hans, American Juries.