Online ISSN: 2671-3659
Print ISSN: 2671-3675
2021
Biannual
Balkan Studies Foundation
North Macedonia

Articles

By Any Other Name: Expressive Implications of Reconceptualizing an International Crime as Another through the Examples of Ecocide and Aggression

  • Vera Piovesan (Author) European Forensic Institute
DOI
https://doi.org/10.51331/A061
How to Cite
By Any Other Name: Expressive Implications of Reconceptualizing an International Crime as Another through the Examples of Ecocide and Aggression. (2025). Journal of Balkan Studies, 5(Special Issue), 109-128. https://doi.org/10.51331/A061
The progressive development of international criminal law is part of a long tradition. International criminal norms have evolved in a process focused on expanding the protection of the underlying values of the system and its anti-impunity agenda. This has also implied the strategic classification of ambiguous underlying acts under different crimes depending on prosecutorial or institutional considerations. However, this article observes a different recent trend in academic discourse, in which an international crime is fully reconceptualized as another in order to overcome jurisdictional limitations. Ecocide and aggression are identified as the primary examples emerging in legal literature. In the case of the former, the reconceptualization proposals have been met with support by the International Criminal Court itself. In the case of aggression, the proposals remain very marginal in legal discourse. This article examines this trend through the lens of expressivism, thus exploring its promises and perils in terms of communicative impact, and it argues that such reconceptualization conveys some problematic messages that warrant further analysis.
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