In the last issue a number of articles were published from a symposium held at University College Dublin on integrating a socio-legal approach to evidence in the international criminal tribunals. The articles focused on specific socio-legal projects carried out in the field of evidence within the international criminal context, and on how such research can enrich our understanding of international criminal law and practice. The articles in this issue focus on certain neglected areas of research and on some of the challenges posed by conducting empirical research in this field.
In his article Rob Cryer refers to socio-legal research that has drawn attention to some of the difficulties to which witness evidence has given rise within international criminal trials. His article highlights a particular problem with witness evidence that has received less attention than some other areas, namely that of witness intimidation and the difficulties that have attended the responses to that problem in a disaggregated international legal system. He illustrates how the black letter of the legal framework does not give a full picture of the issues that arise in practice by showing that there are considerable practical difficulties in ensuring the integrity of witness evidence which stem from the absence of an independent enforcement function in international criminal law.
In her article Caroline Buisman uses a number of examples from cases to illustrate how the ICC Prosecutor has fallen short of the obligation to investigate incriminating and exonerating circumstances equally. Although she suggests that there are limits to the extent to which it may be realistic to expect prosecutors to search purposefully for exonerating evidence contrary to the prosecution case, she concludes from these examples that the OTP failed to investigate cases with the thoroughness to be expected from a diligent prosecutor and urges a review of investigation policy with a view to guaranteeing more thorough and complete investigations in the future.
Finally, Sarah Nouwen provides a fitting conclusion to the symposium by giving a personal insight into the challenges of doing socio-legal research in unfamiliar settings. She draws upon her experience of conducting fieldwork in Uganda and Sudan to reflect upon how these challenges informed her research methodology and findings and how they may also have relevance for international practitioners involved in evidence gathering. Her article suggests that one way of overcoming these challenges is to reinterpret them as findings by changing the scope of the original research questions. Her article also raises challenging questions about the inequality of research opportunities and how this taints the production of knowledge. This symposium was conceived on the assumption that there was too little empirical socio-legal research in the area of international criminal law. Nouwen suggests that this assumption may need to be qualified by a recognition that the challenges of doing such research cannot be overcome merely through the conduct of more socio-legal empirical research; they require socio-legal empirical research, and the publication of that research, by different people.
