Contextualizing Advocates of Humanity : History, Ecology of Fields, and Transnational Legal Ordering

• Published in: Law & social inquiry Vol. 46; no. 4; pp. 1293 - 1299
• Main Author: Savelsberg, Joachim J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.11.2021
• Subjects: Civil society; Criminal justice; Ecology; Ethnography; Human ecology; Human rights; Humanitarianism; International courts; International relations; NGOs; Nongovernmental organizations; Proximity; Sociology; Transnationalism; Uganda; Netherlands; Hague Netherlands
• ISSN: 0897-6546; 1747-4469; 1545-696X
• DOI: 10.1017/lsi.2021.49

With this fascinating, well researched, and excellently organized book, Kjersti Lohne (2019) becomes an important voice in the chorus of contributors to scholarship on the development of international criminal justice (ICJ). Her voice is important because her fundamental arguments are serious, critical, and distinct from dominant strains of scholarship on ICJ. In the following, I summarize core arguments from Lohne’s book: her critical thesis on ICJ and the International Criminal Court (ICC). I juxtapose her thesis with an antithesis, not one that seeks to discard her critique but one that puts it in perspective. I argue that Lohne’s theoretical approach provides her with critical distance from the field. Yet, while her ethnographic methodology comes with a proximity that provides important insights, it needs to be supplemented by a widened lens. I therefore bring her book into a conversation with literature that privileges the long durée, that examines the ICJ field as part of an ecology of social fields, and that sees the expansion of the ICJ field as but one instance of a broader trend toward transnational legal ordering (TLO). I finally hint at a synthesis.