Feminist Engagement with International Criminal Law

Eithne Dowds is Lecturer in Law at Queen’s University, Belfast.

• PART ITHE LEGAL AND THEORETICAL CONTEXT1. Rethinking Feminist Engagement with International Criminal Law: An Introduction I. Key Terms and Scope of the Study II. Setting the Theoretical and Legal Context III. Contribution to Scholarship IV. Methodology: From Theory to Practice V. Recurrent Themes VI. Chapter Synopsis 2. Feminism and International Criminal Law: Key TensionsI. Introduction II. Feminist Intervention into International Criminal Law III. ‘Running Hard to Stand Still’: Feminism and the Criminal Justice Apparatus IV. International Criminal Law as a Lost Cause? Framing Future Directions V. Conclusion 3. The Feminist Strategy of Norm Transfer and the Complementarity Regime of the International Criminal Court I. Introduction II. Norm Transfer as a Feminist Strategy III. Norm Transfer and the Role of the ICC’s Complementarity Regime IV. Norm Transfer as a Dialogue and the Definition of Rape V. Conclusion PART IIRAPE AS A CASE STUDY4. Defining Rape in International Criminal Law: Development and Divergence I. Introduction II. Defining the Crime of Rape at the ad hoc Tribunals: Judicial Development III. Defining the Crime of Rape at the ICCIV. Domestic Approaches to Defining Rape V. Conclusion 5. Rape in War, Rape in Peace: A New Typology of the Wrong of Rape I. Introduction II. Rape in Conflict: Innovation and Exceptionalism III. Rape in Peace: The Egregious of the Everyday IV. Conceptualising the Wrong of Rape at the ad hoc Tribunals: A New Typology V. Conclusion 6. A Feminist Critique of the International Legal Definition(s) of Rape and the Prospect of Norm Transfer I. Introduction II. The Consent Threshold as Inappropriate in International Criminal Law III. The Importance of Consent and the Politics of Representation IV. Assessing the Competing Feminist Perspectives V. The ICC Definition and the Feminist Strategy of Norm Transfer VI. Revising the ICC Definition of Rape VII. Conclusion PART IIISHAPING FUTURE DIALOGUE ON NORM TRANSFER7. Conclusion: Norm Transfer as a Dialogue I. Norm Transfer as a Dialogue II. The Relationship between Consent and Coercion III. Legislative Drafting as a Feminist Methodology

Dowds’s work is timely, original, and contributes to the existing scholarship in different ways. It is the first critical legal analysis to underline the notion of ‘norm transfer’ in the context of the international and domestic definition of rape, focusing on consent as an element of this crime and the potential interchangeable impact between these legislations on this matter. Moreover, it advances the typology of the harm and wrong of wartime rape, particularly the conceptualization of rape as a violation of sexual autonomy.