Challenging the Myth of Neutrality

Within the broader field of international criminal justice professionals, this article deals with a distinct category: non-state actors engaged in strategic litigation. Unlike traditional legal practice, strategic litigation seeks to highlight, challenge, and reform structural biases in the international legal order by invoking international criminal law in international and domestic courts to advance broader social and political objectives. This article discusses how lawyers engaging in strategic litigation fit within the broader community of professionals in the international criminal justice system. Further, it explores the implications of incorporating strategic litigation within the concept of professionalism in international criminal justice: it disrupts the ideal image of the neutral and dispassionate legal professional, but at the same time retains shared benchmarks of competence, transparency, and accountability that confer normative authority on any legal practice. Finally, this article assesses how this reconfigured professionalism influences the practice of international criminal law itself. In doing so, this article makes a case for including strategic litigators as professionals in dominant legal narratives, as their practice influences broader debates on the centrality of the nation-state in the formation and implementation of international law.