Lunch seminar with Karen Lønne Ring
Judicial discretion in the dark: How an absence of oversight has impacted the evolution of the procedure for reviewing victim applications at the ICC
Abstract
At the International Criminal Court (ICC) victims can participate in proceedings. However, in order to gain access to the Court, victims must first apply to be recognised.
A cumbersome procedure for reviewing victim applications is set out in Rule 89 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence and Regulation 86 of the Regulations of the Court. Early on, however, this proved inoperable within the practical and financial constraints of the Court. Particularly in cases with large numbers of applicants, this resulted in huge backlogs of applications. Consequently, it was abandoned in practice.
The Assembly of States Parties (ASP), the governing body of the ICC, recognised this issue and acknowledged the limitations of the framework, but issued no guidelines as to how the issue should be managed.
As such, the Chambers have been left in a legal void, as they do not have the required resources to successfully apply the approach stipulated in the legal framework, whilst officially having to do so while the ASP continually remains seized on the matter.
The lack of guidance from the governing body has de facto left the necessary amendment of the procedure to the discretion of the judiciary. As a result, Chambers have experimented with varying alternative approaches in order to find solutions to the issue of operationalising the victim-application review system in practice.
This paper explores how the procedure for reviewing applications for victim status at the ICC has evolved in practice and how various actors within the Court have influenced this development. Drawing on interviews conducted with actors within the ICC who occupy, or have occupied key positions, the paper examines how these actors have (attempted to) influence the evolution of the procedure for granting victim status, utilizing the lax attitude towards applying the officially sanctioned approach within the Court and the lack of oversight on this issue from the ASP as a spring board for experimenting with new approaches. In doing so, the paper examines the individual and institutional dynamics that effect how this procedure has taken shape, employing a socio-legal approach, using both case-law reviews and semi-structured qualitative interviews.
Having examined how the lack of oversight with the applied procedures affect how various actors can influence this process, the paper concludes by drawing on these findings to make broader claims about how oversight, or a lack thereof, can influence judicial policymaking in international criminal law.
Speaker bio
Karen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University where she conducts research on procedural justice in international criminal law, specifically at the International Criminal Court.
In her PhD project, Karen examines the judicialization of victimhood at the ICC by investigating how the procedure for reviewing victim applications has evolved in practice. She employs empirical methods (semi-structured elite interviews) to discern what ideas and conceptions of victims and their role in proceedings are held by practitioners and how they have influenced the legal construction of victimhood at the Court.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s Degree in Law from the University of Copenhagen.
Meeting ID: 649 2321 9276
Passcode: 293587