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Contemporary international criminal law (ICL) is a well-established field of scholarship and practice that wields significant influence in framing how certain events come to be understood and acted upon. Yet, as the field has increasingly captured the public's attention and imagination, a body of critical scholarship has risen in prominence that seeks to test and challenge ICL's underlying assumptions. In such a climate, this article suggests that ICL not only has moved beyond its inception and consolidation phases, but is beginning to emerge from its critical period towards a 'post-critical' phase where critique is becoming increasingly normalized within the field, with both reformist and structurally oriented reappraisals more readily acknowledged within ICL's imaginary. Situated in this 'post-critical' moment, this article examines the extent to which the vocabulary and institutions of ICL may be productively (re-)engaged in the pursuit of emancipatory ends. After providing an overview of the strands of critique that have become increasingly prominent, we reflect on three avenues for engaging with the field of ICL 'after critique': first, critical engagement , centred on a commitment to revealing and detailing silenced and marginalized experiences and methods within the field itself; second, tactical and strategic engagement , which points to the ways in which actors choose to engage with imperfect legal frameworks for particular struggles; and finally, decolonial and abolitionist (dis-)engagement which takes as its point of departure the rejection of both colonial and carceral logics per se , especially in light of their historical and persisting patterns of patriarchal and racialized domination. Ultimately, in linking ICL with historical and contemporary anti-colonial and anti-carceral struggles, we seek not only to disrupt ICL progress narratives, but also to show how earlier, often-sidelined ways of imagining forms of harm and their repair may provide potentially more productive ways of engaging with ICL 'after critique'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once hailed as beacons of democracy, social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter now find themselves credited with its decay. Amidst a rising global techlash and growing calls for digital constitutionalism, this article develops a typology of the diverse forms of governance enabled by social media platforms and examines the contestability of human rights law in addressing the accountability deficits that characterize the platform economy. The article examines two interrelated forms of social media governance in particular: content moderation, encompassing the practices through which social media companies determine the permissibility and visibility of online content on their platforms; and data surveillance, encompassing the practices through which social media companies process personal data in accordance with their extractivist business models. Recognizing that human rights law is a vocabulary of governance with the potential to both restrain and legitimate particular relations of power within the platform economy, this article critically examines two rival conceptions of human rights law – marketized and structural – that may be relied upon to address the accountability shortfalls that pervade the contemporary social media ecosystem. The article ultimately argues in favour of a more structural conception of human rights law, one characterized by an openness to positive state intervention to safeguard public and collective values such as media pluralism and diversity as well as a systemic lens that strives to take into account imbalances of power in the social media ecosystem and the effects of state and platform practices on the social media environment as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting on the COVID-19 infodemic, this paper identifies different dimensions of information disorder associated with the pandemic, examines how online platform governance has been evolving in response, and reflects on what the crisis reveals about the relationship between online platforms, international law, and the prospect of regulation. The paper argues that online platforms are intermediary fiduciaries of the international public good, and for this reason regulation should be informed by relevant standards that apply to fiduciary relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's digital public sphere, individuals have little choice but to participate on online platforms, whose design choices shape what is possible, content policies influence what is permissible, and personalization algorithms determine what is visible. Ensuring that online content moderation is aligned with the public interest has emerged as one of the most pressing challenges for freedom of expression in the twenty-first century. Taking this challenge as its focus, this Article examines the promise and pitfalls of a human rights-based approach to content moderation--with a specific focus on the choices and challenges that online platforms are likely to confront in adhering to their corporate responsibility to respect human rights in this context. The Article examines three dimensions of a human rights-based approach to platform moderation in particular: a substantive dimension, encompassing the alignment of content moderation rules with international human rights law; a process dimension, encompassing the standards of transparency and oversight that platforms should implement as part of their human rights due diligence processes; and a procedural-remedial dimension, encompassing the procedural guarantees and remediation mechanisms that platforms should integrate within their systems of content moderation. The Article concludes by reflecting on some of the limits of the human rights-based approach and cautioning against viewing human rights as a panacea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship within the field of international criminal justice has increasingly turned towards expressivist strands of thought, characterised by a concern for the didactic qualities of international criminal courts. Taking expressivism as its point of departure, this paper critically examines the expressive limits of international criminal justice. Specifically, the paper examines the extent to which international criminal courts have been expressively constrained both in their ability to alleviate the traumas of victims and in their receptivity to the local cultural values of conflict-affected communities. The paper argues that a critical reflection on the expressive limits of international criminal courts, paying particular attention to their retributive core and cultural assumptions, can help such institutions better navigate the complex terrain in which they operate, reducing aspirations concerning what they should be expected to achieve in practice and improving their legitimacy amongst local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since allegations arose of Russian meddling in the 2016 United States presidential election, cyber influence operations have garnered worldwide attention. This article examines the different options available under international law for holding States responsible for cyber influence operations on elections. To this end, the article first elaborates a typology of different cyber election meddling techniques, before examining three paradigms of international law that may be relied upon to frame State responses to cyber influence operations—the general public international law paradigm, the human rights paradigm, and the State liability paradigm. The article concludes by considering why States have so far avoided the vocabulary of international law in formulating their responses to cyber influence operations and offers a suggestion as to where international law may have a more central role to play in this context in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the field of international criminal justice, opinion remains divided concerning the extent to which international criminal courts should be expected to write history. Taking this debate as its point of departure, this article argues that contestation over the historical function of international criminal courts hinges on the underlying conception of justice - adjudicative or sociopolitical - to which scholars and practitioners adhere in practice. The article demonstrates how these rival conceptions of justice function less as static positions and more as lines of argumentation that can be deployed to support or critique the range of practices that shape the historical narratives constructed within international criminal courts in practice. The article concludes by identifying a potential avenue to advance the conversation on the historical function - one that would assist in articulating what should legitimately be expected of international criminal courts and enable their practices to be evaluated in a more textured manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the historical function of criminal courts tasked with adjudicating episodes of mass violence is well established, the precise purpose behind narrating history within atrocity trials remains a matter of contestation. This article examines how certain domestic atrocity trials have constructed narratives of the past aligned with the nation-building aspirations of those states in which they were convened. Rather than framing justice primarily in terms of upholding standards of fairness to the accused or responding to the needs of victims and local communities, the domestic atrocity trials examined in this article reflect a notion of ‘justice as identity’ whereby the criminal courtroom becomes a didactic mechanism of nation-building. The article examines two domestic atrocity trials in particular — the German trial of Auschwitz guards and the French trial of Paul Touvier, a former regional chief of the Vichy Milice. By revealing how these trials prioritized competing conceptions of the rule of law — the Auschwitz trial relying on a conservative conception of the rule of law underpinned by a strict legality conception of the principle of legality, and the Touvier trial relying on a more transformative conception of the rule of law underpinned by a substantive justice conception of the principle of legality — this article reveals an important dimension of the mechanics by which domestic atrocity trials have been able to legitimate particular conceptions of national identity out of specific interpretations of a nation’s past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the effect of the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice over the Kosovo Advisory Opinion. It considers the court's reasoning that whether there is violation of general international law, Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999) and the Constitutional Framework when there is adoption of the declaration of independence. It also focuses on the legality of independence by third states and the attempted succession by Kosovo.