On August 21, 2013, chemical weapons were unleashed on the civilian population in Syria, killing another 1,400 people in a civil war that had already claimed the lives of more than 140,000. As is all too often the case, the innocent found themselves victims of a violent struggle for political power. Such events are why human rights activists have long pressed for institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute some of the world's most severe crimes: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. While proponents extol the creation of the ICC as a transformative victory for principles of international humanitarian law, critics have often characterized it as either irrelevant or dangerous in a world dominated by power politics. Christopher Rudolph argues in Power and Principle that both perspectives are extreme. In contrast to prevailing scholarship, he shows how the interplay between power politics and international humanitarian law have shaped the institutional development of international criminal courts from Nuremberg to the ICC. Rudolph identifies the factors that drove the creation of international criminal courts, explains the politics behind their institutional design, and investigates the behavior of the ICC. Through the development and empirical testing of several theoretical frameworks, Power and Principle helps us better understand the factors that resulted in the emergence of international criminal courts and helps us determine the broader implications of their presence in society.
"Rudolph's book is a welcome contribution to the body of literature that has left the partisan debates about constructivism versus rationalism behind and instead focuses on the exploration of their concrete interaction in producing observable outcomes."
Human Rights Review
"Rudolph challenges the assumption that states' interests are obstructive to the institutionalization of international criminal justice, and shows how principles and power are independent... The book's research design makes the theory and empirical evidence accessible and useful to a broad range of scholars."
Perspectives on Politics
"This excellent study makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on international organizations... The book has an excellent review of the literature explaining the creation of the [International Criminal Court], and it examines the role of interests defined in terms of power in shaping its institutional design... A pathbreaking volume."
