Abstract

While the question of whether international criminal courts and tribunals (ICTs) ought to write historical narratives of armed conflicts is an old one, it has gained renewed relevance in the context of the recent turn to history in international criminal law and the minimal attention paid to historical context in the first judgment of the International Criminal Court. The ‘proper’ place of history-writing in international criminal adjudication remains controversial, and even though some judges have preferred to de-emphasize it, the fact remains that ICTs are epistemic engines, systematically and inevitably producing knowledge about the conflicts that come before them. This article develops a framework for analysing the historical knowledge generated by ICTs, namely, the ‘crime-driven lens’. It argues that this lens is characterized by two important constraints, one qualitative, relating to interpretation and the other quantitative, relating to scope, both of which may give rise to blind spots. In the final analysis, while the important contributions of ICTs to deepening understanding of the histories of armed conflicts should not be underestimated, the constraints of the ‘crime-driven lens’ and its blind spots have to be taken into account when assessing their historical legacies.

中文翻译：

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国际刑事审判的历史``犯罪驱动的镜头''及其盲点

摘要

虽然国际刑事法院和法庭（ICT）是否应该写出武装冲突的历史叙述这一问题是一个古老的问题，但在国际刑法最近转向历史以及人们对此关注不多的背景下，它又具有了新的意义。国际刑事法院一审判决的历史背景。在国际刑事审判中，历史写作的“适当”位置仍然存在争议，尽管一些法官宁愿不加强调，但事实仍然是，信息通信技术是认知引擎，有系统地，不可避免地产生有关摆在他们面前的冲突的知识。 。本文开发了一个框架，用于分析由ICT产生的历史知识，即“犯罪驱动的镜头”。它认为，这种透镜的特征是两个重要的限制，一个是质量上的，与解释有关，另一个是数量上的，与范围有关，两者都可能导致盲点。归根结底，尽管不应低估信息通信技术对加深对武装冲突历史的理解的重要贡献，但在评估其历史遗产时，必须考虑到“犯罪驱动的镜头”及其盲点的制约因素。 。