Since the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) establishment in 2002, its interventions in African situations have produced a mix of results. Whereas many observers have hailed the ICC’s forays onto the continent for expanding the avenues of justice for mass atrocities, there are also political connotations to some of its interventions, as evidenced in narratives of selectivity and neo-colonialism. Building on the latter impacts of the Court’s interventions in Africa, this thesis seeks to discern the shape of local/regional uptake of international criminal justice (ICJ). This follows from contrasting the ICC’s qualification as a moral agent in the global war on impunity for international crimes, with domestic political translations of the Court’s interventions and subsequent collective action at local and regional levels. Thus, the principal argument from this thesis is that contextual normative adaptions produce global-local exchanges that result in viable conditions under which the ICC’s interventions are politicized, to the detriment of its investigative activities and legacy in situation countries. More specifically, elite level exchanges in sub-national, national, regional and international realms produce blends of local and global realities, resulting into the ICC’s exposure to politicization. These findings are instructive for wider debates on the subtle ways in which the ICC is undermined (rather than outright defiance), with spiralling effects on long term peace-building and other regional contexts. In discerning the aforementioned conclusions, I asked the simple research questions: (1) why and how is an ostensibly international legal response to heinous crimes susceptible to (mis)appropriation and subversion by domestic political elites? (2) what are the far-reaching consequences of politicizing the ICC’s interventions on creating conditions for lasting peace in fragile societies? Given the duality of the ICC’s politicization – through (mis)appropriation and subversion, the thesis adopted a comparative study of Uganda and Kenya, which exemplify the two forms of domestic translations of ICJ. The thesis employed a qualitative methodological approach that drew upon secondary data sources, as well as primary data collected through personal key informant interviews in the Netherlands, Uganda and Kenya, with ICC officials, politicians, government officials, representatives of local and international organizations and affected communities. Some of the secondary data sources include: journal articles, media reports, government documents, books, online sources, legal instruments, the ICC’s documents and official speeches. The data collected was analyzed through grounded theory, in which evidence collected raised new sub-questions for further interrogation. All available evidence was then triangulated to develop a critical analysis of the research questions posed. Conceptually, I built on three interrelated concepts (the ICC’s projection of a moral universe, the narrative lens and spatial hierarchies) to discern the ICJ norm diffusion in local/regional contexts. The thesis concludes that the various forms of political resistance to the ICC have pernicious effects on peace-building beyond national boundaries. Perhaps, a greater degree of the Court’s acceptance will be driven by its proactive steps towards the universality of justice, whose absence partly informed the construction of narratives on some of its foremost interventions in Africa.

Given the prominence of international trade in the globalized economy, large undesirable costs arise due to uncertainties in international transactions. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sales of Goods, Vienna, 1980 identifies some of these costs to be a product of separate legal rules on international trade, and recognizes the solution to lie in a unified statement of norms. Judicial experience with the Convention, however, has demonstrated that the existence of a unified statement of norms does not ensure uniform results. While the majority of the literature on the Convention takes a black letter law approach without examining the impact of varying interpretations on the end users of the Convention, this thesis argues that the provisions of the Convention, from the perspective of the parties, must operate to achieve the ends of efficiency. Absent the same, parties drafting a contract would opt out of the application of the default rules by including a provision in the contract governing the contingency. Such an outcome would in turn significantly increase transaction costs associated with contractual negotiating and drafting. This thesis concerns itself with six areas that have raised a great deal of disagreement amongst the scholarly and judicial community namely: The scope and role of the principle of good faith; the issues surrounding the inclusion of standard terms into the contracts of sale; the extent to which the Convention allows for the use of openprice terms; the question of the period within which notice of non-conformity must be provided; the rate at which interest has to be paid on sums in arrears and; the guiding principles for the interpretation of the term 'foreseeability' as contained in article 74. Each chapter of this thesis therefore deals with one of these issues and attempts to resolve it in line with the international character of the Convention - and one that promotes the efficiency of the agreement. For the purposes of this thesis, an efficient rule is defined as one that operates to minimize transaction costs, does not allow or de-incentivizes the potential of parties to act in an opportunistic manner and places liability on the best risk avoider. In reaching such an interpretation of the articles under examination, the thesis gives due regard to the travaux preparatoires, scholarly opinion and judicial pronunciations on the matter.

Bangladesh’s place on the globe as a sovereign nation-state came at the expense of millions of victims who perished during the war of 1971. For the greater part of four decades an endemic culture of impunity deprived the surviving victims of justice. As the crimes of 1971 remained beyond the ratione temporis of the ICC, the Bangladesh Government established the first International Crimes Tribunal in 2010 under the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act 1973 for the purposes of detaining, prosecuting and punishing “persons responsible for committing genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other crimes under international law” in 1971. According to critics, the ICTs are a case of “complementarity gone bad” because they have failed to uphold international standards of justice. This thesis determines the legality and the legitimacy of the ICTs of Bangladesh. It does so by analysing the major criticisms directed towards the statutory provisions of the ICTA and the trial process of the ICTs through the prism of the principle of complementarity with particular reference to the “principles of due process recognized by international law”.