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AbstractTaking its cue from the recent “graphic turn” in law and humanities scholarship, this essay explores the potentially enabling possibilities of graphic literature as a site of doing justice. In particular, it connects critical work on graphic justice with recent theorisations of victims’ justice to ask whether graphic narrative(s) might provide an alternate space, or what Leigh Gilmore terms an “alternative jurisdiction,” that allows victims of international crimes and/or grave human rights violations to claim justice outside the formal bounds of law. From this perspective, the inquiry pursues two complementary aims. First, it seeks to offer new insight into the possibilities of graphic narrative to give voice to the lived experience of trauma and injustice – not just as testimony or evidence, nor as a mere humanistic gloss on the rigidly defined terrain of law, but rather as a form of justice itself. Second, it looks to present a set of fresh reflections on international law’s treatment of violent trauma, and on the sites and spaces within which victims’ justice might be effectively addressed and attained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law of persecutions has given rise to a certain definitional instability and judicial unease, notably due to the fact that the crime itself falls short of a definitive and comprehensive definition. As this article proposes to argue, this legal opacity could be unveiled by revisiting the law of Nuremberg, which, through the creation of the new crime against humanity of 'persecutions', might have in reality marked the birth in positive international law of the concept of 'genocide' itself. By keeping the crime of persecutions within the definitional ambit of crimes against humanity while simultaneously emancipating and recognizing genocide as a separate and distinct crime, contemporary international law has generated legal uncertainty and misconceptions as well as judicial unease, so much so that persecutions now found themselves somewhere between crimes against humanity and genocide. Not only is this definitional floating and opacity troublesome from a legality perspective, it also misunderstands the Nuremberg precedent and ultimately risks trivializing the essence of the crime of genocide itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]