Legal Humility and Perceptions of Power in International Criminal Justice

Abstract This article examines how judges and lawyers working in international criminal courts see their authority relation to power exerted by states, organisations private actors. We draw together ethnographic research inside the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ( ictr ) Court icc that examined perceptions of interactions among local, national legal regimes potential accomplice liability arms traders under law. Overall, we show actors these routinely understood as severely limited concurrent sites public authority. Building on ideas humility, argue this should be ‘selective humility’. humility demonstrated a reticence about what internationalised can achieve while offering an argumentative defence against critiques practice.