As the title of his book suggests, Christopher Rudolph positions his argument concerning how international criminal courts are created, designed, and function between the realist and constructivist schools of thought. That is, Rudolph challenges the assumption that states’ interests defined in terms of power are obstructive to the institutionalization of international criminal justice, and shows how principles and power are interdependent.

The structure of Power and Principle neatly delineates three phases in the institutionalization of international criminal justice: the formation, design, and operation of courts (pp. 6–7). As a result, each chapter provides a stand-alone contribution with new evidence for the ways in which international criminal courts are dependent on the support of powerful states and must work within the limits of the established international order.

The book’s research design makes the theory and empirical evidence accessible and useful to a broad range of scholars. Each chapter employs an “eclectic” (p. 7) methodological approach—combining qualitative methods of archival research, process tracing, textual analysis, interview data, and so on with quantitative methods of probit regression models. This eclecticism is also employed with respect to epistemology, as Rudolph combines realist understandings of power and hierarchy with institutional theories of “regime complexes” (p. 64) and two-level game frameworks.

In Chapter 1, the author argues that “principled politics and political activism” cannot sufficiently explain the creation and design of the postwar and ad hoc tribunals, nor the absence of international courts in the Cold War; “realpolitik provided opportunities” for such principled activism for justice (pp. 16–17). Both postwar tribunals were a product of the Allies’ desire to hold German and Japanese individuals responsible for aggressive war, not crimes against humanity, thereby legitimizing the Allies’ participation in them (p. 23). Subsequently, the Nuremberg principles had little deterrent effect in the Cold War. Post–Cold War, the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) liberal democratic members’ decisions to create the ad hoc tribunals were a pragmatic response to the pressure to do “something” (p. 40) in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and reflected preferences for an alternative to military intervention. Russia and China were motivated to tacitly support the tribunals because of their interest in maintaining good relations with the West. In these cases, Rudolph argues, major powers were responsive to the need for international justice insofar as they could still protect their interests. Yet once the courts were created, the principles of human rights norms shaped the course of justice by influencing the courts to focus on atrocity crimes committed in war.

In Chapter 2, Rudolph explains that “state support (or opposition) to the [International Criminal Court] must be seen as a direct function of the process of institutional design” (p. 67). The ICC’s status as “nested” within the UN meant that the UNSC’s potential relationship with the Court divided states depending on their position in the global hierarchy. Using a mixed-methods approach of textual and regression analysis, he assesses states’ positions during multiple phases of institutional design negotiations. He concludes that the P5's (Permanent Five) support was contingent on an institutional design that subordinated the ICC’s independence to the UNSC to protect their interests and out of a pragmatic desire to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Alternatively, “dissatisfied powers strongly preferred an institutional design that would create a court free from the UNSC nest” (p. 82). While these states “couched their arguments in principled terms—of equality under the law irrespective of power” (p. 87)—it was in their interests regarding their relative power in the global hierarchy.

In these early chapters, Rudolph’s contrast of idealism and realism is somewhat problematic. It advances the proposition that the choice to pursue justice is principled, whereas the choice to limit or obstruct justice stems from self-interest. His evidence subtly suggests that there is the possibility that pursuing justice can be in the strategic interests of states or that what passes for impunity can be based on a principled desire for stability.

State support for the ICC during its institutional design phases also reveals a few outliers: Britain, France, and Guatemala. Chapter 3 provides an explanation for this deviance using a two-level game framework. British and French defections from the P5 consensus on UNSC control over the ICC did not privilege principles over power, but rather reflected domestic and regional political considerations (i.e., New Labour’s electoral tactics in Britain, and France’s desire to maintain European unity). Among states who opposed UNSC control, Guatemala’s outlier status stemmed from concerns over the potential for domestic prosecutions of key regime officials.

Beyond the creation and design of the ICC, the court’s operations have been marred by accusations that the prosecutorial strategy is influenced by politics. Chapter 4 rejects the polarizing arguments that the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) has been captured by powerful states or maintains complete independence from politics. Rudolph begins with the assumption that the ICC’s effectiveness is dependent on the support of the UNSC and thus it must internalize the preferences of its nonmembers (i.e., the P3: Russia, China, and the United States). There is, therefore, a predictable divergence of interests between the P3 and states’ parties whose legal idealism shaped the ICC’s mandate. The innovative analysis of both legal (complementarity and gravity) and political (public pressure and P3 strategic interests) factors demonstrates “strong support that the gravity of a situation and the level of P3 strategic interests vested in a given situation have a strong influence on the choices by the OTP, both the choice to pursue a formal investigation and the swiftness with which they do so” (p. 134). It would be useful if Rudolph had extended this analysis to the OTP’s selections of cases, where it has displayed a stronger commitment to legal independence and where the interests of states’ parties are more relevant than those of the P3.

The concluding chapter delves into whether states’ interests defined in terms of power have characterized the ICC’s inability to deter perpetrators of atrocity crimes and the persistent impunity of those involved in the Syrian crisis. With respect to deterrence effects, Rudolph joins the consensus that a self-interested logic still prevails, in that conflict resolution is prioritized over justice. With respect to Syria, the lack of P5 unity has been the primary obstacle to halting atrocities and ensuring an ICC referral.

Ultimately, the analysis adduces evidence to support the realist logic of international criminal justice, rather than principles and norms as causal factors. On the one hand, Rudolph makes a realpolitik logic more compelling by using a multidimensional conception of power, including both soft power and domestic politics as relevant factors in state decision making. Moreover, disaggregating “support” for international criminal courts into phases of creation, design, and function reveals that states seek to protect their interests primarily in the first two phases, leaving principles of legal idealism to guide the actual process and outcomes of justice afterwards.

On the other hand, however, Power and Principle still reinforces a false dichotomy that dogs much scholarly work on international criminal justice, which is defined by the putatively adversarial logics of idealism versus realism. While Rudolph acknowledges that principles are not inconsequential, he still cautions that “principles of justice may need to heed the realities of international power politics by adopting a pragmatic approach” (p. 7). However, most scholarship generalized as “idealist,” including the select few scholars that Rudolph frequently cites as exemplary, readily acknowledges the role of power and strategic interests in international justice. In truth, beyond the false dichotomy, there is a much broader scholarly middle ground that holds that both power and principle do matter, even as there are disagreements over the inevitability of these logics and how and when they are the driving force in international relations. Having said that, Rudolph does provide much-needed evidence to support the realist claim that power always matters.