Ruling through the International Criminal Court’s rules

Abstract

This article investigates sovereign (in)equality as a phenomenon that is manifested in the different levels of international institutions. The analysis is developed from the process against Omar Al Bashir, Sudan’s President-in-Office, at the International Criminal Court. Considering that norms and rules have a social role in the multiple relations existing between agents and structures, that is, they transform relations in the international system, the article investigates the dispositions and principles present within the scope of the International Criminal Court that authorize a discrimination between States. This distinction implies the imposition of international rules for some actors and the maintenance of certain sovereign prerogatives for others. More specifically, international criminal justice is characterized by selectivity in judgments, as some countries are given certain authority over the regime. In this sense, it is argued that the sovereign (in)equality that is present in international criminal law is simultaneously a manifestation and condition of possibility for the hierarchy in the social, and therefore institutional normative, and political architecture of the international system. It is argued that the presence of this sovereign (in)equality can be identified at the different levels of the institutions of international society, insofar as they influence one another.