Impunities, in The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law (Kevin Jon Heller et al. eds., 2020)

This chapter addresses the concept of impunity, commonly envisioned as freedom from punishment (poena). It does so because ‘fighting impunity’ drives the establishment of international courts and tribunals. This chapter offers a discourse analysis of press releases of two international criminal tribunals to gauge their understanding of poena. This chapter argues that this understanding, which maps onto international justice efforts generally, is narrow to the point that ‘fighting impunity’ reduces to a carceral monologue. Instead, this chapter argues in favor of a broader vision of poena such that ‘fighting impunity’ would invoke a broader array of tools such as reparations, shame, sanction, memory, and recrimination. In the end, then, it is preferable to speak of ‘impunities’ than ‘impunity’