The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice / Lawrence Douglas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Douglas, Lawrence, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, [2026]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A sweeping history of the struggle to hold states to account for their gravest crimesThe Criminal State offers a gripping account of how law has confronted the most radical forms of state violence. Beautifully written, broad in scope, and bracingly original, it weaves history with political thought to trace the shifting legal response to state aggression and atrocities, from Leopold's rule over the Congo to Putin's war in Ukraine. At its heart is Lawrence Douglas's fresh interpretation of the law's reckoning with Nazi aggression and atrocity. He shows how the Nuremberg trials challenged centuries of thought-rooted in Hobbes and other canonical thinkers-that shielded sovereigns from legal scrutiny. Yet Nuremberg's bid to frame aggression as the cornerstone of a new order of international criminal law largely failed, giving way to a system now centrally concerned with crimes against humanity and genocide-while leaving unresolved the legality and effectiveness of using force to stop the worst violations of human rights. Providing rare historical perspective on the dilemmas facing international courts, The Criminal State is a sweeping, provocative history of the struggle to bring perpetrators of state violence to justice.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of contents

Introduction

PART I THE MYSTICAL VIRTUES

chapter 1 Hobbes and the Mystical Sanctity of the State

chapter 2 Frenzy Let Loose, or Grotius and Vattel Seek to Civilize War While Kant Looks for a Way Out of the Hobbesian Trap

chapter 3 Carl Schmitt Dreams of Westphalia

chapter 4 The Great War, or Millions Die but Not the Mystical Sanctity of the State

chapter 5 From the Ottoman Empire to European Colonialism, or Atrocity, Barbarous and Civilized

PART II NUREMBERG AND THE AGGRESSION PARADIGM

chapter 6 The German Rupture

chapter 7 Nurembergs Aggression Paradigm

chapter 8 Nurembergs Crimes Against Humanity: Atrocity Becomes a Crime, with a Caveat

chapter 9 The Twelve Subsequent Trials

chapter 10 The Aggression Paradigm Further Unravels in Tokyo

chapter 11 The Framing and Undoing of the Aggression Paradigm at the UN

PART III THE ATROCITY PARADIGM

chapter 12 Genocide: Its Meaning and Its Convention

chapter 13 The Eichmann Trial Establishes the Principle of Universality

chapter 14 The Atrocity Paradigm Explodes Laws Temporal Limits

chapter 15 Aggression Against Atrocity

chapter 16 Putin in Ukraine: Aggression as Atrocity

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed April 14 2026)

ISBN:

9780691278414