Description
Although expressivism has been studied in relation to criminal justice since the emergence of modern international criminal law, an expressivist perspective in norms and criminal justice research resurfaced in the past decades, inviting a new viewpoint on the dynamic interplay between norms and symbolic action in International Relations (IR). Situated as an account of punishment, expressivism has been criticised for being too abstract and lacking an immanent meaning, or for its dialectic position in relation to punishment. Addressing this theoretical shortcoming, this article remediates our understanding of norm expressivism, establishing new knowledge of the meaning of norm expressivism in IR and clarifying the relationship between expressivism and notions of punishment in criminal justice and norm research. To this end, it unpacks the rhetoric of countries’ delegates at the United Nations (UN) in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I examine crucial examples of expressivism: disagreement pronouncements, denunciation of norm violation, postulation of guilt, and penal analogies. While criminal justice research posits expressivism as a distinct account of punishment, the novelty of this article consists in illustrating how, even in the absence of judicial prosecution in the courtroom, expressivist rationales can have a re-enforcing scope on the international legal order.
