2. Is International Criminal Justice the Handmaiden of the Contemporary Imperial Project? A TWAIL Perspective on Some Arenas of Contestations

The construction of contemporary international criminal justice seems to have followed a trajectory defined by the inescapable colonial origin, history and purpose of modern international law. Notwithstanding the professed successes and progress made towards the establishment of a universal standard or notion of justice, Post-World War II international criminal justice remains an essentially imperial ideal intolerant of a plurality of visions of justice and whose resistance and legitimacy in the Global South is often obfuscated by media representation. In this chapter, I identify four arenas of contestations in this regard and examine each of them to demonstrate that international criminal justice has not shed its historical antecedents that characterised its previous manifestations in previous eras. These arenas of contestations—the supposed universality of legal norms of international criminal justice; the alleged inherent selectivity of international criminal justice in the prosecution of perpetrators; the categories of crimes; and the establishment of its foremost institutions for its enforcement. The chapter will adopt TWAIL as an analytical framework to expose the manifest contradictions in the construction of international criminal justice and some of the legal problems thereby created. I argue that international criminal justice remains a tool in the service of hegemonic international law.