Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in this book. The book contributes to the analysis and exploration of the production, representation, and role of crime in the emerging international order or international society, but does not ignore the role of power in the production of this legal order. Critics of the establishment and development of supranational criminal justice fear that it will merely certify extant power relations by providing the stamp of legitimacy to practices of war risking and state making that otherwise resembles organised crime and processes of political disenfranchisement. These critics may find actions justifying UN interventions into the former Yugoslavia and Iraq and the inconsistent prosecutions as ample evidence that supranational civil society will reproduce, if not exacerbate, inequalities of access and standing that more generally matches up with geopolitical in and out groups.