International Crime in the 19th Century Social Imaginary: Exploring the Development of the Conceptual Foundations of International Criminal Law and International Criminal Justice

(Dissertation)

My dissertation examines the historical development of the conceptual foundations upon which the contemporary field of international criminal law and the politico-legal project of international criminal justice have been built.

While the legal doctrines and institutional practices of contemporary international criminal law did not decisively emerge until the early- to mid-20th century, in this dissertation I show that the ideas behind this institutional shift were already well-worn by then. Employing the tools of intellectual history and legal sociology, I explore the ways in which legal actors (including lawyers but also state officials, diplomats, military officers, merchants, planters, sailors, and others) framed, enacted, and deployed three foundational legal ideas over the course of the 19th century. In Chapter 2, I examine the ways in which the concept of a supranational or universal crime (the idea of supranational or universal crimes (acts whose commission merits both criminal accountability and the concern of publics and actors beyond the confines of any nation state) was used in public and political discourse over the course of the 19th century. In Chapter 3, I examine the ways in which legal actors experimented with the idea of international criminalization (the practices by which legal actors could define and establish certain forms of violence as “crimes of international concern”) before and during the 19th century. Finally, in Chapter 4, I examine the ways in which legal actors experimented with the idea of internationalized criminal adjudication (the practices by which states might go about holding individuals accountable for such “crimes of international concern”) during the 19th century.

This foundational study of the conceptual underpinnings of international criminal law and international criminal justice illuminates the ways in which legal actors’ understandings of and efforts to use these concepts during the 19th century shaped the boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate violence in the Western social imaginary during this period. And further how they prefigured and constrained the ways in which these concepts were framed and formalized as professional field international criminal law took shape.

Available via UCLA eScholarship here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/845045jt.

“The Quiet Expansion of Universal Jurisdiction”

(Co-Authored with Máximo Langer)

Based on an original world-wide survey of all universal jurisdiction complaints over core international crimes presented between 1961 and 2017 and against widespread perception by international criminal law experts that universal jurisdiction is in decline, this article shows that universal jurisdiction practice has been quietly expanding as there has been a significant growth in the number of universal jurisdiction trials, in the frequency with which these trials take place year by year, and in the geographical scope of universal jurisdiction litigation. This expansion is likely the result of, among other factors, the adoption of ICC implementing statutes, the creation of specialized international crimes units by states, institutional learning by states and NGOs, technological changes, new migration and refugee waves to universal jurisdiction states, criticisms of international criminal law as neo-colonial, and the search of new venues by human rights NGOs. Universal jurisdiction’s expansion has been quiet because most tried defendants have been low-level, universal jurisdiction states have not made an effort to publicize these trials, and observers have wrongly assumed Belgium and Spain were representative of universal jurisdiction trends. The paper finally assesses positive and negative aspects of the quiet expansion of universal jurisdiction for its defenders and critics.

Suggested Citation:
Máximo Langer, Mackenzie Eason, The Quiet Expansion of Universal Jurisdiction, European Journal of International Law, Volume 30, Issue 3, August 2019, Pages 779–817, https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chz050