Head of state immunity, order, justice and the international criminal court: limits of international criminal justice in international society

Abstract The post-Cold War international justice project is underpinned by the goal of overcoming impunity, an important part of which involves setting aside the historically evolved norm that rank or station will protect individuals from criminal responsibility. One of the primary forums where this plays out is the international criminal court. International relations theory is generally absent from discussions about the degree to which tensions between the legally evolved immunity for heads of state and the emerging idea that gross violations of human rights should trump claims of immunity, inform the relationship between order and justice. This paper proposes that the English School of International Relations provides the ideal framework to overcome this theoretical absence, and that in turn it is best suited to explain competing explanations of this tension, as it relates to order and justice, and broader limitations of the international criminal justice project.