Epilogue

Abstract

Abstract This chapter summarizes the book’s findings and discusses their implication for research on international criminal law (ICL). It argues that semi-peripheries of the global system—such as Latin America and Central Eastern Europe—are central to contestations and reformulations of hegemonic readings of this body of law. Legal actors from such regions often adapt ICL to the national and regional contexts of specific mass atrocities, because such traumatic pasts have been ignored or even intentionally left out of the scope of ICL during international negotiations. Rather than a harmful phenomenon, such reinterpretations can be seen as transformative visions that contribute to the gradual development of a more inclusive ICL. The chapter also highlights how the education, political values, and visions of legal actors about dictatorial pasts impacted their understanding—and thus their transformation—of different norms and principles. Such a sociological approach offers a better understanding of how law functions and how it is systematically fashioned and refashioned at the intersection of history, political decision-making, and the subjective attitudes of those involved in these processes. Finally, the chapter calls for more ethnographic and cultural research alongside the analysis of the jurisprudence as a way to fully understand how judicial officials and justice activists employ and understand international law across the globe.