In this chapter, I introduce the main questions I seek to answer in this book, which are: what gives international courts the authority to punish individuals for international crimes, and under what conditions may courts legitimately exercise that authority? I give an overview of the history of international criminal justice, of my methodological assumptions, and of the arguments I make in the individual chapters.

Chapter 1 uses the construction of the Peace Palace in The Hague around 1910 as metaphor for his intellectual project. The Peace Palace was the tangible outcome of two consecutive international conferences on international law in Tinbergen’s birthplace. The conferences were an initiative of nineteenth-century imperial powers, but provided an important impetus to the international legal, and later economic, order that would come to characterize the twentieth century. In a similar way Tinbergen’s work is marked by a tension between older nineteenth-century historical state-centered perspectives on the economy and modern twentieth-century techniques and scientific tools. The theme of peace and the construction of an international order were central to Tinbergen’s intellectual project. And like the Peace Palace, his project was characterized by a tension between high-minded idealism and political realities. Most importantly, the city of The Hague as diplomatic center in a small country, dependent on international trade and peace, provides a helpful lens through which to understand Tinbergen’s oeuvre.

Chapter 2 describes the family in which he grew up. Both his parents were teachers, and his father Dirk Cornelis was a quite prominent figure in The Hague. Dirk Cornelis Tinbergen held a PhD in Dutch medieval literature and was part of progressive educational milieu that sought to renew pedagogical methods and the Dutch spelling. His mother stayed home after she had children, but she stimulated the societal awareness of Jan Tinbergen. He had four siblings, two of which also pursued scientific careers. Luuk and Niko Tinbergen were both successful biologists; Niko won a Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1973, four years after Jan Tinbergen won the Nobel Prize in economics. It is argued that the family was an example of Bildungsbürgertum. In the education of the children there was ample attention to culture and the study of nature. Unlike his brothers, Jan had little appetite for outdoor life and from a young age was more drawn to the exact sciences and modern industry, in particular, the trams in The Hague.

Chapter 3 analyzes the tension between his bourgeois upbringing and his socialist convictions. In his early twenties Tinbergen went through his most radical period in which his socialism was fostered within the social-democratic student clubs, the Workers Youth Movement (Arbeiders Jeugd Centrale, AJC), and the pacifist milieu. He sought to identify closely with the fate of the workers. Through Tinbergen’s review of the novel A Middle-Class Man (Der Bürger) by Leonhard Frank, about a bourgeois man who seeks to join the socialist struggle, the tensions in his life and work during this period are explored. The chapter details how Tinbergen tried to find his own role, and that of his fellow students, in the fight for socialism. This involved finding the right response to Marx, exploring modern approaches in economics, and identifying the way in which he could contribute most to the socialist cause. Initially, he believed this would mean becoming one with the workers and the workers’ movement, but within a few years Tinbergen distanced himself somewhat from these movements, and became convinced that modern scientific economics was the way forward.

The final case study considers place branding as a feature of marketised global justice. Cities, regions and nation states are branding themselves as global justice – or global injustice – places in order to attract capital. The language, institutions and aesthetics of international criminal law are employed to form the global justice or injustice brand. The chapter includes three ‘mini’ case studies: The Hague, a city that is dedicating significant resources to its brand of ‘City of International Peace and Justice’; South Africa, a state that has invested into a top-down brand of successful transition; and Cambodia, a state in which branding is split down class lines, whereby the elites compete for global justice capital and the rest compete for the far smaller returns of ‘dark tourism’, or global injustice. The guiding issue for this chapter is the de-historicisation of places through branding as well as the de-politicisation that comes with commodification.