Author Archives: Mark J. Osiel

About Mark J. Osiel

Aliber Family Chair at the University of Iowa, College of Law. He is the author of six books on legal responses to mass atrocity, and has served as the Director for International Criminal and Humanitarian Law at the T.M.C. Asser Institute, The Hague.

The demise of international criminal law

We theorists of international law like to pose venturesome, vitalizing questions, sweeping in scope: What would an ideal system of international criminal law look like, for instance, relieved of today’s geostrategic constraints? How might we lend some conceptual coherence to such a program, flesh out its normative details? What kind of world would be required for such a program to become possible, even intelligible? How should we imagine the workings of such a hypothetical world?