Beyond Backlash: How to Save the International Justice Regime

• In Event: Populist Threats to Human Rights Institutions

Abstract

While the idea of “backlash” against international courts has gained traction in recent years, most of the research and policy work on the topic has focused only on single case studies, failing to place this backlash within the broader political context of international ruptures and global democratic backsliding. Second, and relatedly, scholars and practitioners tend to identify backlash in a post-hoc way. We are missing a typology that can help us more systematically analyze this phenomenon. This paper and the larger book project of which it is part, seeks to remedy these issues and shift the scholarly thinking around backlash to international courts. To do so, this paper asks three questions: 1) What are the threats that international criminal and human rights tribunals face and from whence do they originate? 2) Why do different actors—governments, political elites and the public—seek to undermine these tribunals? And, 3) What should the courts do to safeguard themselves from these threats and to reaffirm the nexus between peace and justice? This paper introduces a typology of backlash and provides a set of hypotheses about when and how backlash occurs. The remainder of the associated book manuscript seeks to answer the three aforementioned questions through a wide-ranging set of case studies.

Author

• Courtney Hillebrecht, University of Nebraska, Lincoln