ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the critical geographies of law through an exploration of recent legal innovations establishing institutions trying individuals for breaches of international humanitarian law (IHL). It reviews that the possibility of revived legal commons can be analysed though three modalities: rights, testimony, and mobilisation. The chapter explains that each modality works within and beyond law to evoke new commonalities that resist either a reduction to identity politics or the entrenchment of difference. It focuses on particular element of the international legal system: whether people can see in the operation of IHL the basis for a revived notion of the commons. The chapter examines the potential modality of a legal commons which relates to the voicing of trauma and memory: the possibility of providing testimony. It explains that the legal commons explores mobilisations and focuses attention on the excesses of law: namely, that the political and social effects of the juridical process always exceed the verdict and sentencing outcomes.
