Justice Tides: How and When Levels of ICC Involvement Affect Peace Processes

This article investigates how involvement by the International Criminal Court
(ICC) in situations of ongoing conflict affects peace processes. It argues that the level of ICC involvement is crucial for the Court’s impact on peace settlements and that this impact takes the form of delegating politico-legal and discursive authority away from peace process actors. To make this argument, the article disaggregates the processes of ICC involvement and peacemaking into component parts and conceptualizes a broad notion of judicialization. This analytical framework is applied to two cases with different negotiation outcomes: the Juba talks between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation between the Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Movement.