Of Legal Cars Leaving Political Factories

This chapter covers three journeys of law and politics. We begin with a trip to an event organized to promote an International Criminal Court bill in Uganda, during which I met Pål Wrange as a courageous driver and top-class doctrinal scholar. The main journey is that of a special War Crimes Court, which travelled away from the peace agreement that had given rise to it. Although the travellers presented it as law leaving politics behind, they in fact still travelled a political route, just a different one: they, for instance, prioritised one understanding of rule of law (‘accountability’) over another (‘legal certainty’). The War Crimes Court’s journey illustrates the journey that the field of transitional justice has made: from justice around a political compromise to criminal justice trying to avoid compromise. The third is Pål’s journey back to academia and to critical international law. May that journey continue, even after retirement.