This chapter provides an account of why and how the dominant “atrocity aesthetic” model identified in the previous chapter has persisted, despite remaining itself, grounded in unstated and untested assumptions concerning the fundamental nature of the causal dynamics of mass harm causation. It does so by examining the substance, structure, and application of ICL in light of insights from social constructivist norm development theories, and research on the role aesthetic considerations play in individual and social meaning-making processes. Through this analysis, this chapter identifies a variety of factors within the substance and practice of ICL that encourage actors to rely heavily on aesthetic perception when identifying potential international crimes and assessing their relative gravity. These factors include: the complexity of many atrocity situations; the continued presences of considerable zones of ambiguity within ICL; the extreme selectivity of ICL investigations and prosecutions; and the spectacular visibility and self-evident nature of many historical, recent and ongoing situations involving the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, and/or war crimes.

This chapter introduces the main themes explored in this book, provides an overview of the methodological framework utilized and summarizes the main claims advanced.

This chapter identifies some of the broader effects of the social and legal invisibility of aesthetically unfamiliar atrocity processes beyond merely adding to the so-called impunity gap that afflicts international criminal justice. It does so by demonstrating how aesthetic biases favoring horrifically spectacular crimes not only undermines the goals and values ascribed to ICL itself, but also contributes to a variety of negative outcomes that go far beyond missed prosecutorial opportunities. ICL’s myopic focus on horrifically spectacular crimes raises a host of troubling questions concerning what harms are prioritized and whose interests are served by international criminal justice. This chapter considers some of these implications, specifically those relating to theories of punishment, and ICL’s role in shaping historical memory, how transitional justice, peacebuilding, human rights issues are framed and pursued, along with global justice more broadly.

This chapter addresses the contention that ICL practice focuses myopically on horrific spectacles because all, or at least the most serious, international crimes necessarily involve the production of such spectacles. It does so by demonstrating that ICL, in its current form, appears capable of addressing forms of harm causation significantly different in nature and aesthetic familiarity than those it has overwhelmingly been applied to in the past. It does so in two parts. First, it considers scholarship that examines how genocide, atrocity, and mass violence actually manifest themselves and unfold. This scholarship highlights the dynamic, causally multifaceted nature of most atrocity commission processes. Second, it examines the degree to which the doctrinal substance of ICL could account for the causal heterogeneity and complexity of atrocities. Through this analysis, this chapter demonstrates that, in theory, ICL could be applied to a variety of harm causation modalities failing to conform to the atrocity aesthetic.

This chapter assesses the role aesthetics play in the social construction of dominant shared understandings of the so-called core crimes of ICL: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It demonstrates how, since the inception of ICL, widely shared understandings of these crimes have remained grounded in an aesthetics of horrific spectacle, which I refer to as the “atrocity aesthetic.” That is, shared understandings of both atrocity and international crime are associated with spectacular acts of horrific violence and abuse, reflecting deeply held, if rarely articulated, assumptions concerning how genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes will manifest themselves and the means through which they may be committed.

This concluding chapter offers some thoughts on the broader implications of the arguments made in this book. It specifically considers how the book’s contention that a dominant “atrocity aesthetic” influences how international crimes are recognized and conceptualized relates to broader debates concerning the role of international law and international criminal justice, such as those related to questions of determinacy, power, sovereignty, and Global North–South relations. It also considers how aesthetic biases may affect the actual purposes served by international criminal justice as a global project, raising the concerning possibility that one unstated purpose international criminal prosecutions serve is to provide cathartic relief to distant publics exposed to the ugliness of atrocity violence, rather than focusing on the interests and needs of those most directly affected by such violence. It concludes with a call to abandon outdated understandings of atrocities as horrific and spectacular eruptions of violence, and to reconsider what international crimes are in light of the many forms atrocity violence may actually take.

This chapter, utilizing an interactional legal theory framework, considers the legal legitimacy implications of international criminal law’s aesthetic biases. This assessment is important for two reasons. First, the need to protect ICL’s legal legitimacy is often presented as a reason why ICL accountability should not be pursued for nontraditional modalities of atrocity commission. Second, in a more general sense, such an examination helps us to understand how unacknowledged biases affect the legal legitimacy of ICL. Through an analysis of how the aesthetic biases of ICL affect adherence to a selection of Fuller’s criteria of legality, this chapter demonstrates that, from an interactional perspective of international lawmaking and legality, rather than protecting the legal legitimacy of ICL, the continuing myopic focus on aesthetically familiar forms of atrocity commission actually impairs ICL’s legitimacy as a putative international legal regime.

This chapter considers ICL’s applicability to a variety of real-world situations involving the production of mass suffering and/or death through relatively slow, unspectacular forms of harm causation. It identifies various examples of situations that, upon careful analysis, appear to have involved the commission of one or more international crimes, yet failed to conform to the atrocity aesthetic. These potential crimes have also been afforded comparatively scant attention, especially in comparison to more spectacular forms of atrocity, despite often being massive in scale and gravity, suggesting that their aesthetic unfamiliarity has contributed to, or at least facilitated their relative invisibility, socially and legally, as potential international crimes.