In association with the International Commission of Jurists

May 2020

29 May

[Kamari Maxine Clarke is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles.] I thank Sara Ali for her role in organizing this symposium, as well as Kevin Heller (with assistance from Jessica Dorsey) at Opinio Juris for his willingness to host it. I am especially grateful to the eleven commentators for the tremendous work that went into reading and engaging with Affective Justice. In...

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29 May

[Sara Kendall is a Senior Lecturer in International Law at The University of Kent in the Faculty of Law. She is also Co-Director of The Centre for Critical International Law.] In early March 2020, the US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo gave a press briefing concerning the ICC Appeals Chamber’s decision on Afghanistan. As is widely known by Opinio Juris’s readership, the ICC’s prosecutor aimed to investigate...

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29 May

[Olaf Zenker is a Professor at the Department for Anthropology and Philosophy at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). He is a political and legal anthropologist researching (post-)conflict, inequality and justice in Africa and Europe, especially in contexts of normative pluralities including international criminal law.] Kamari Clarke’s Affective Justice is an impressive accomplishment and important contribution to the expanding field of the anthropology of justice, and of...

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28 May

Analyzing the issue of religious discrimination in counterterrorism laws requires first, to look at the facts: whereas many cases brought to justice until the years 2000s concerned Corsican and Basque separatists[1], people indicted for acts of terrorism today are mostly identified as (radicalized) Islamists.  Moreover the attacks of February and November 2015 led to a point of no return where terrorism...

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28 May

[Christopher Gevers teaches international law and and legal theory in the School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal; his research focusses on Third World Approaches to International Law, critical race theory and law and literature.] This is the finest book on Africa’s relationship with the International Criminal Justice project that I have read; if not the last word on the subject, perhaps the first ‘sensible’ one. There...

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28 May

[Richard Ashby Wilson is Professor of Anthropology and Law at the University of Connecticut and author of Incitement On Trial: Prosecuting International Speech Crimes.] In recent years, a number of ethnographic and qualitative studies have been published that are highly critical of international tribunals for their geographical, political and cultural distance from the crimes they adjudicate. In Affective Justice, Kamari Clarke offers an impassioned critique of the International...

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27 May

[Bronwyn Leebaw is an Associate Professor of Political Science, Director of Global Studies, at the University of California Riverside.] In Little Fires Everywhere, a television series based on the novel by Celeste Ng, Elena Richardson is eager to provide assistance to her new tenant, Mia Warren, welcoming her to the neighborhood, offering her a job, and looking after her daughter. Elena called the police on...

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27 May

[Edwin Bikundo is a Senior Lecturer at the Griffith University Law School, Gold Coast, Australia with teaching and research interests in public international law and legal theory.] Affective Justice, the new book by noted international criminal justice expert Kamari Maxine Clark is a deep, broad and profound study, mediation on and explication of the International Criminal Court’s engagement with Africa and it’s diaspora - broadly speaking...

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27 May

[Dire Tladi is a Professor of International Law, at the University of Pretoria, a member of UN International Law Commission and its Special Rapporteur on Peremptory Norms of General International Law (Jus Cogens).] Given the scourge of the Corona pandemic, the timing for this post is perhaps awkward at best.  But still, I was very pleased when requested to provide some thoughts...

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26 May

[Nayanika Mookherjee is a Professor of Political Anthropology in Durham University and her research concerns an ethnographic exploration of public memories of violent pasts and aesthetic practices of reparative futures through research and publications (including a graphic novel and animation film) on gendered violence in conflicts, memorialisation and transnational adoption.] Kamari Clarke’s Affective Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Pan-Africanist...

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26 May

[Mark Goodale is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology and Director of the Laboratory of Cultural and Social Anthropology (LACS) at the University of Lausanne and also Series Editor of Stanford Studies in Human Rights. This is the latest post in our symposium on Kamari Maxine Clarke’s book, Affective Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Pan-Africanist Pushback.] Kamari Maxine Clarke’s superb ethnographic and critical study of...

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26 May

[Katherine Lemons is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at McGill University and author of Divorcing Traditions: Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism (Cornell 2019).] Kamari Maxine Clarke’s new book, Affective Justice, is an important contribution to anthropology of law. The book brings a question frequently asked of small non-state adjudication institutions to bear on two international criminal courts:...

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