International Criminal Justice Case Selection Independence: An ICJ Barometer (original) (raw)

According to some observers, increasing prosecution of core international crimes advance a norm that confronts realist state interests. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, for example, view a norm as cascading when enough states adopt it to cause international influence, without domestic pressure, to procure levels of conformity.1 How do we determine whether such levels of conformity are increasing or decreasing? The number of international crimes prosecution incidents is not sufficient to indicate a strengthening norm. It is necessary to determine the extent to which justice is actually confronting impunity. Sikkink claims that a justice cascade occurs when there is “a dramatic shift in the legitimacy of the norms of individual criminal accountability for human rights violations and an increase in actions (like trials) on behalf of those norms. It doesn’t mean that true justice will be done, just that the norm has new strength and legitimacy as we can see from how common it has b...