Lunch seminar with Joseph Keogh
Between Norms and Power: The EU’s Footprint in International Criminal Justice
This project seeks to understand how the interplay between policy commitments and power dynamics shape the EU’s influence in international criminal justice. It builds on the emerging body of scholarship interrogating power and capital in the field of international criminal justice (ICJ) by examining the EU’s place within it, particularly from the perspective of complementarity facilitation. It takes as its starting point the evolution of the EU’s self-constructed identity within this space, and the corresponding way it has ‘embedded’ itself in the field. Combining an analysis of the EU’s discursive positioning versus its engagement in practice helps to reveal the ways in which the Union has – or has not – contributed to reorganising the field of international criminal justice. For its part, the EU frames complementarity in developmental language. Applying this developmental rationality has the potential to frustrate existing power structures within the elite ICJ community, particularly where legalist justice logics predominate. Applying a sociological lens, I examine how EU officials interpret, apply and internalise discursive policy commitments like the Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA) to development vis-a-vis ICJ. The HRBA’s rhetoric centres on participation, non-discrimination, accountability and “local ownership”. I hypothesise that if the EU truly operationalises its HRBA, we should see a shift in practice toward more locally led, contextually sensitive, pluralist forms of justice delivery. Operationalisation arguably depends on buy-in from external actors, which will be used as a hook to scrutinise the capital and different forms of power the EU exercises in practice. The project draws on a range of interrelated but hitherto largely unconnected literatures – including scholarship on power in ICJ and EU foreign policy – to offer a novel, sociologically informed exposition of a prominent but largely neglected actor in the elite ICJ community.
Speaker bio
Joseph Keogh is a second year PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh. His research investigates the EU's role in complementarity facilitation in third countries, with a geographic and thematic focus on Sub-Saharan Africa.
He is interested in how the EU conceptualises international criminal justice as a development issue, and the extent to which its 'human rights-based approach' to development is reflected in practice. Joseph views complementarity as a competitive field shaped by communities of practice, and is seeking to understand how the EU operates within this contested space, including the way in which its HRBA may counter accusations of 'donor justice'.
Joseph is currently hosted by Professor Mikkel Jarle Christensen at the iCourts centre, where he is developing the theoretical dimensions of his project.