The Professional Market of International Criminal Justice

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses the division of labour and patterns of elite reproduction that characterize international criminal justice as a market of services. Using a sociological framework and building on empirical data on 996 professional agents, the analysis outlines how the market in and around the international criminal courts is structured by three different social groups that dominate the formal roles of judges, prosecutors and defence counsel. The article investigates the relative positionality of these groups highlighting the low degree of mobility between them. It also demonstrates the reproduction of male, global north professionals at the top of these groups, pointing towards intersectional dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in this market. To deepen the analysis of divisions of labour and reproduction of status, the article turns to a closer analysis of the patterns of expertise upon which elite status is built and how it links the three groups to the wider market of international criminal justice. The relations between the identified social groups, the elite of which have very particular characteristics dominated by global north professionals, educations and networks, structure a core part of the market of international criminal justice and formats the social fault lines behind its normative debates.