‘Please, get me called to The Hague!’ The international criminal court as history’s soapbox

How do ICC trial actors articulate political and historical narratives? Understanding the International Criminal Court’s role as a mediator of political history is crucial for understanding its deterrent potential. With jurisdiction over ‘the most serious crimes of international concern’, the ICC is a flashpoint for narratives that go beyond the legal.Footnote1 These narratives can arguably ‘shape societal expectations about what constitutes justice’.Footnote2 But can holistic extra-legal narratives exist without, or beyond, a trial's binary legal outcome? This article examines two major ICC trials of high-profile political defendants through the lens of what this article refers to as expressive deterrence: the promotion of ideals of deterrence through the strategies of expressivism. We will first examine the articulation of political identity narratives in the trial (2009–2018) of Jean-Pierre Bemba, former Vice-President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Next, we will analyse grand historical narratives in the trial (2016–2019) of Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Côte d’Ivoire. Both trials ended in controversial acquittals. This article demonstrates the ways in which ICC actors express political history within trials. It problematises how narratives become intricately intertwined with legal verdicts and reflects on how we might thus reconsider or reassess the ICC’s deterrent potential.