The Deep Script of International Criminal Law:

• Department of Law

Join us for the May session of the Law Department Faculty Seminar.

The book that this paper introduces argues that in international criminal proceedings, the prosecution, defence and judges all tell stories about the defendant. In doing so, they create personae. And they create these personae in accordance with the deep script of international criminal law. This deep script divides roles, assigns narrators, sets the stage, provides instructions, rules and procedures, and comes with traditions, stock characters, typical plots, and narrative structures. With the International Criminal Court’s case against Dominic Ongwen as its example, this book shows how the deep script of international criminal law works in the stories told by the prosecution, defence and judges. It contrasts these stories with other stories about Ongwen and their underlying scripts: stories told by communities in northern Uganda and specifically by Acholi religious and cultural leaders. Rather than aiming to find out the ‘true’ Ongwen behind all these stories, this chapter argues that the point of analyzing these stories is to show that institutional settings come with their own deep scripts that limit the stories they can tell and the personae they can produce. For that reason, so this chapter contends, doing justice to the person on trial also means that international criminal law’s story about the person can never be the only story; justice requires a plurality of stories.

Paper by: Sarah Nouwen and Wouter Werner.

The paper will be shared with the participants upon registration.

Please register by May 12 at 12:00 PM.