Beth Simmons - Can the International Criminal Court Deter Atrocity?

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Abstract

Whether and how violence can be controlled to spare innocent lives is a central issue in international relations. The most ambitious effort to date has been the International Criminal Court (ICC), designed to enhance security and safety by preventing egregious human rights abuses and deterring international crimes. We offer the first systematic assessment of the deterrent effects of the ICC for both state and non-state actors. We argue that the ICC can potentially deter through both prosecution and social deterrence. While no institution can deter all actors, we argue that the ICC can deter some governments and those rebel groups that seek legitimacy. We find support for this conditional impact of the ICC cross-nationally. Our work has implications for the study of international relations and institutions, and supports the violence-reducing role of pursuing justice in international affairs.

 

Biography

Beth Simmons is Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University. She received her PhD. from Harvard University in the Department of Government. She has taught international relations, international law, and international political economy at Duke University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard.  Her current areas of research include cooperative approaches to counter transnational crime (human trafficking, money laundering, corruption), the development of international law with respect to foreign direct investments, and the implementation of international human rights standards in domestic law.

Her book, Who Adjusts? Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy During the Interwar Years, 1924-1939, was recognized by the American Political Science Association in 1995 as the best book published in 1994 in government, politics, or international relations. Her recent book entitled Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics was published in 2009 from Cambridge University Press.  It received the APSA’s Woodrow Wilson Award, the International Social Science Council’s Stein Rokkan Prize, the American Society for International Law’s Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship, and the International Studies Association’s Best Book Award.

Beth Simmons has worked at the International Monetary Fund with the support of the Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship (1995-1996), has spent a year as a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (1996-1997), a year in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (2002-2003), and a year as a Straus Fellow at New York University Law School’s Institute for Advanced Study of Law and Justice (2009-2010).

She currently serves as Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard. Simmons was elected in April 2009 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and through April 2012 is President of the International Studies Association