Saving the International Justice Regime: Beyond Backlash

• In Event: International Human Rights Courts and the Politics of Mobilization and Backlash

Abstract

While resistance to international courts is not new, what is new, or at least newly conceptualized, is the politics of backlash to these institutions. This paper, which builds on an eponymous book manuscript, asks—and answers—three main questions about backlash politics: (1) What is backlash and what forms does it take? (2) Why do states and elites engage in backlash against international human rights and criminal courts? and (3) What can stakeholders and supporters of international justice do about these contemporary challenges? Moving well-beyond the single-case studies that have thus far dominated much of the discussion of backlash against human rights and criminal tribunals, “Saving the International Justice Regime” examines backlash politics across two legal regimes—the international human rights and criminal regimes; three court systems—the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Human Rights System and the ICC; and two continents and nearly a dozen countries. In answering these questions about backlash to international courts, this paper provides both a reflection of the state-of-the-art about backlash politics and sets out a research agenda for future work.

Author

• Courtney Hillebrecht, University of Nebraska, Lincoln