Conflicts of Legitimacy: A 'legitimate' International Criminal Court for post-Gaddafi Libya

Abstract

This thesis breaks down the commonly used but nonetheless abstract analytical concept of ‘legitimacy’, in the context of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction and interventions in Libya, following the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in 2011.Three constitutive lenses of legitimacy are proposed: labelled the procedural, the normative and the sociological. The Court's interventions in post-Gaddafi Libya are evaluated on procedural and normative measures, with the current security situation in Libya limiting examination of sociological indicators. Through theoretically-grounded exploration of the Libyan interventions, greater transparency is brought both to the Court’s widely criticised interventions within this situation area, and to an influential concept which it has been all too easy for champions of the ICC to assert, and it critics to reject.