Is International Criminal Law “Crowding Out” the Rest of Public International Law?

That’s the question underlying my new essay, The Rise of International Criminal Law: Intended and Unintended Consequences, in the European Journal of International Law (Vol. 20, No. 2, June 2009).  And I’m very curious as to whether anyone else shares my general feeling that the very success, on important metrics, of international criminal law is tending to swallow, as it were, the rest of public international law.

The essay is a very wide-ranging, high altitude, fast survey of ways in which international criminal law has impacted other areas of international law, including the laws of war, law related to the Security Council and the UN, and other matters.  Even a section on … robot soldiers!  Here is the table of contents:

• Regimes of mutual benefit and regimes of altruism
• Alternative to intervention?
• Earning the moral right to administer universal justice
• Reprisal and reciprocity in the laws of armed conflict
• The rise of the machines
• Individual liability and the loss of the laws of war as rules for the social organization of war between groups
• Does anyone ‘own’ the rules of war anymore?
• An end-run around the P-5?
• Neglecting the UN?