The emerging sociology of international criminal courts: Between global restructurings and scientific innovations

Abstract

Since the emergence of the idea of international criminal courts as a form of international governance between and after the two world wars, scholarly interest in the role and functionality of these institutions has been dominated by the academic disciplines of law and political science. Recently, this literature has been challenged and supplemented by an emerging sociology of international criminal courts. In contrast to previous scholarship, this sociology has taken the social dynamics that drive the development of these institutions as its object. More than simply responding to the international transformations that led to the resurgence of international criminal courts in the 1990s, the emerging sociology of these institutions was predicated on an epistemological break with previous forms of social science that created scientific innovations in the form of original research tools. Crucially, these innovations also made new types of international research objects visible to sociological scholarship.