The interpenetration of global political and economic life has placed questions of ‘political economy’ on the scholarly agenda across the social sciences. The author argues that international law could contribute to understanding and transforming centre–periphery patterns of dynamic inequality in global political economic life. The core elements of both economic and political activity – capital, labour, credit, and money, as well as public or private power and right – are legal institutions. Law is the link binding centres and peripheries to one another and structuring their interaction. It is also the vernacular through which power and wealth justify their exercise and shroud their authority. The author proposes rethinking international law as a terrain for political and economic struggle rather than as a normative or technical substitute for political choice, itself indifferent to natural flows of economic activity.

This contribution presents international judicial institutions as multifunctional actors against the background of a traditional understanding, which sees just one function: settling disputes. The traditional, one-dimensional understanding eclipses other important functions that many international courts do actually perform in contexts of global governance and it underrates problems in their legitimation. In order to appreciate international adjudications’ manifold contributions to social interaction, the paper first identifies three more functions beyond dispute settlement: the stabilization of normative expectations, law-making, and the control as well as legitimation of authority exercised by others. It then places these functions within broader basic understandings of international courts, which respectively picture them as instruments of the parties in a state-centred world order, as organs of a value-based international community, and as institutions of specific legal regimes. The distinct problems that each of these basic understanding faces lead to the contours of a new paradigm for the study of international courts as actors exercising public authority. The present functional analysis ultimately helps to refine both the phenomenon and normative questions.

Embassy bank accounts are among the properties of states most widely present in foreign states. Accordingly, they constitute an ideal target for attachment by creditors. International instruments have largely upheld state immunity from execution regarding bank accounts, however. Likewise, state practice largely – and apparently increasingly – supports state immunity from measures of attachment, by applying a presumption that funds in embassy bank accounts are used for governmental non-commercial purposes. This approach is overly deferential to the state. Instead, it is argued that domestic courts should require that the state, at least partially, discharge the burden of proof regarding the nature (commercial/sovereign) of the funds in the bank account. A failure to discharge this burden should result in a rejection of immunity. Only such an approach adequately balances the interests of states and creditors, and does sufficient justice to the creditor's right of access to a court. In addition, it is argued that such a balance is also brought about by construing literally general waivers of immunity from attachment, as not requiring an additional specific waiver regarding embassy bank accounts.

Any legal system, including the international legal system, consists of rules that serve multiple purposes and functions that the legal system in question needs to perform in order to survive as a viable organism. Jurisprudence of national and international courts relating to areas such as responsibility, immunity, and dispute settlement has involved intensive discussions as to the nature and implications of the various categories of rules. Approaching this broad area, with its multiple components, requires careful differentiation of the nature of those various categories of rules, for the fact that the relevant classification of rules works in one area does not inherently make it workable in other areas, which is confirmed in practice. The most problematic issue remains the judicial application of jus cogens in relation to state immunities and the ensuing distinction between substantive and procedural rules. It is shown in this contribution that this artificial distinction does not reflect the functions international law actually accords to its various rules, and is instead a product of political and ideological preference to keep particular classes of plaintiffs out of certain jurisdictions.

The following contribution interprets the ICJ decision on the case Jurisdictional Immunities of the State in a broader picture. The article focuses on the cause of action underlying the domestic civil claims, i.e. the primary rules providing for individual rights. Indeed, the traditional view, which conceives immunity as a ‘procedural’ rule, vigorously upheld by the Court, is not the only way to address this topic. In our view, state immunity is a substitute for other more sensitive questions, namely the definition of ‘state’, its prerogatives, and the individuals as right holders under international law. This approach points out a different rationale under state immunity, leading to major practical consequences in terms of the assessment of international jurisdiction.

In this article, I argue that two prominent frameworks for evaluating and developing international criminal law (ICL) can be reconciled into a new framework that absorbs the best insights of its predecessors. We cannot simply transplant fundamental principles from national legal systems, because they may be inapposite in the unusual contexts faced by ICL. However, this novelty does not mean that we are free to simply abandon culpability, legality, and our basic underlying commitment to the individual. Instead we must explore what that deontic commitment might entail in these new contexts. My primary aim is to show the possibility of bridging the apparent normative impasse. I also briefly sketch out the proposed framework, and suggest that it can generate new questions for current controversies in ICL. As an interesting by-product, the examination of ‘abnormal’ criminal law can raise new questions for general criminal-law theory, by exposing subtleties and parameters that we might not have noticed in a study of ‘normal’ contexts.

It is commonly agreed that international criminal law (ICL) is a ‘hybrid’ legal culture, which mixes the legal traditions of the common law and civil law. However, the precise nature of this legal culture remains a contentious legal and theoretical issue. The paper identifies the two dominant models of ICL within these debates as either a clash of cultures or a sui generis system, and shows how neither satisfactorily engages with the concept of legal culture itself. To address this problem, the paper develops a new account of ICL as a global legal culture. The paper first identifies the distinctive ‘cultural logic’ of ICL, drawing on the example of recent developments in sexual violence offences. It then examines how ICL takes a global legal form, which ‘globalizes’ liberal legal culture. Finally, the paper shows how this process of making the legal culture of ICL ‘global’ creates its cultural contradictions, but also enables the possibility of making a new legal culture at the international level.

In 2011 three Congolese ICC defence witnesses applied for asylum in the Netherlands. A decision has not yet been made. This article argues that three outcomes of their procedures are most likely: (i) an asylum permit is granted, (ii) a permit is denied, or (iii) the applicants are excluded from refugee protection on the basis of Article 1(f)(a). All scenarios would have serious practical and political consequences for the ICC, the Netherlands, and the DRC. There is a limited, but real, chance that future defence witnesses will also apply for asylum. This mere threat might already seriously hamper future co-operation between the ICC and states parties. More practical and political dilemmas stemming from a lack of harmonization between international criminal law and principles of international protection lie ahead, since a coherent scheme on how to deal with ICC defendants whose case has been rejected in the pre-trial phase, who have been acquitted, or who have served their sentence and cannot be refouled to their country of origin has thus far not been realized. As it stands the international community does not have an answer to this fundamental system error yet.