The Challenges for Asian Jurisdictions in the Development of International Criminal Justice

• Main Author: FINDLAY, Mark
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2010
• Subjects: International Criminal Justice; Asian Studies; Criminal Law; International Law; Jurisdiction
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/937; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sol_research/article/1936/viewcontent/Findlay_ChallengeAsianJurisdictions.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The paper reviews the different frameworks for international criminal justice in which China’s influence can be measured, or should be present, looking specifically at procedural traditions on which international criminal law and its jurisprudence are said to be based. Understanding China as a transitional hybrid criminal justice model undergoing radical transformation in its justice delivery and discourse, it is argued, assists significantly in forecasting where the synthesis of international criminal procedure may be heading. Attached to a re-interpretation and critique of individualised liability is the unpacking of China’s in principle commitment to communitarian rights and social protection as a foundation for its criminal justice model. How might a similar normative direction influence the diversification and ‘rights’ perceptions of international criminal justice? In particular, in today’s China, which is experiencing a rapid and relentless reconfiguration of communitarian identity and obligation, will collective rights commitments survive to influence the development of domestic criminal justice? From a more formalist consideration of international criminal justice, the paper explores what ‘alternative’ global justice paradigms offer China, and vice versa. Speculation on the opportunities available to China in regional and international governance, through more constructive involvement with international criminal justice is proposed against a call for a wider consideration of rights paradigms in so far as they recognise community interests as well as individual integrity. The strain between these priorities reveals how Asian states could find it more difficult to administer domestic criminal justice in accordance with the rightful demands of international conventions.