Balancing the scales of justice: towards a synthesised system of international criminal law
Date
2014-01-23
Authors
Laher, Yumna
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Abstract
The history of international relations has been spotted with
examples of serious international crimes and the growing need to
hold those responsible accountable for their actions has since given rise
to a system of international criminal justice. There is, however, no
unified theory of prosecution in international criminal law and the field
has been plagued by divisions in both theory and practice. At the
international level of prosecution, trials conducted under the principle
of universal jurisdiction and underpinned by the theoretical tenets of
legal positivism are pitted against those conducted under internationalsanction
and promoted by functionalists. Although the need to develop
a common framework of practice has been articulated, the inability of
legal theorists and political scientists to stretch the limits of their
discipline has, to date, resulted in the pursuit of a limited justice.
Utilising comparative case study analysis, this paper aims to assess the
extent to which mechanisms of prosecution at the international level
contribute to the outcome of justice and to what extent it may be
suitable to advance a model of synthesised international criminal
prosecution to balance the scales of justice in the future.
Description
Thesis (M.A.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, International Relations, 2013