Strategic Impunity: Why Universal Jurisdiction Fails to Prosecute Sitting Officials

This thesis investigates the structural failure of universal jurisdiction to hold sitting state officials accountable for international crimes, focusing on the interplay between legal immunity, geopolitical influence, institutional limitations, and victim marginalization. While universal jurisdiction is grounded in jus cogens norms and obligations erga omnes, its implementation remains obstructed by the doctrine of immunity ratione personae, which shields high-ranking officials from foreign prosecution. Drawing on a multi-theoretical framework - integrating legal realism, constructivist norm theory, institutionalism, forum theory, and participatory justice - the study develops the concept of strategic impunity. This model conceptualizes impunity not as a legal anomaly but as a patterned outcome of structurally embedded legal, political, and discursive mechanisms. This model departs from existing accountability literature by framing impunity not as failure, but as systemic design...Show moreThis thesis investigates the structural failure of universal jurisdiction to hold sitting state officials accountable for international crimes, focusing on the interplay between legal immunity, geopolitical influence, institutional limitations, and victim marginalization. While universal jurisdiction is grounded in jus cogens norms and obligations erga omnes, its implementation remains obstructed by the doctrine of immunity ratione personae, which shields high-ranking officials from foreign prosecution. Drawing on a multi-theoretical framework - integrating legal realism, constructivist norm theory, institutionalism, forum theory, and participatory justice - the study develops the concept of strategic impunity. This model conceptualizes impunity not as a legal anomaly but as a patterned outcome of structurally embedded legal, political, and discursive mechanisms. This model departs from existing accountability literature by framing impunity not as failure, but as systemic design shaped by multi-level strategic calculations. Through a comparative analysis of two outcome- convergent case studies: the International Court of Justice’s Yerodia ruling (2000) and Belgium’s failed prosecution of Ariel Sharon (2003), the thesis employs process tracing and critical discourse analysis to empirically test this model. Findings reveal that legal doctrines are interpreted to shield political elites, geopolitical actors intervene to preserve strategic alliances, institutional inertia curtails enforcement, forum manipulation redirects accountability efforts, and victims are systematically excluded from legal narratives. The study concludes that universal jurisdiction fails not despite the legal system, but because of it, reflecting a judicial architecture designed to preserve sovereign power under the guise of legal coherence. Unlike studies that focus on doctrinal inconsistencies or prosecutorial discretion, this thesis exposes how the architecture of international justice itself structurally resists accountability of sitting officials. Unless institutional reforms address the political insulation of legal bodies, procedural exclusion of victims, and doctrinal entrenchment of immunity, universal jurisdiction will remain aspirational rather than actionable. This thesis contributes to international legal scholarship by offering a robust explanatory framework for the recurrent failure of accountability mechanisms and calls for a reimagining of global justice beyond state-centred legal formalism.Show less

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Strategic Impunity: Why Universal Jurisdiction Fails to Prosecute Sitting Officials