Ruling through the International Criminal Court’s rules

legalized hegemony, sovereign (in)equality, and the Al Bashir Case

Resumen

This article investigates sovereign (in)equality as a phenomenon that is manifested in the
different levels of international institutions. The analysis is developed from the process against
Omar Al Bashir, Sudan’s President-in-Office, at the International Criminal Court. Considering
that norms and rules have a social role in the multiple relations existing between agents and
structures, that is, they transform relations in the international system, the article investigates the dispositions and principles present within the scope of the International Criminal Court
that authorize a discrimination between States. This distinction implies the imposition of
international rules for some actors and the maintenance of certain sovereign prerogatives
for others. More specifically, international criminal justice is characterized by selectivity
in judgments, as some countries are given certain authority over the regime. In this sense,
it is argued that the sovereign (in)equality that is present in international criminal law is
simultaneously a manifestation and condition of possibility for the hierarchy in the social,
and therefore institutional normative, and political architecture of the international system.
It is argued that the presence of this sovereign (in)equality can be identified at the different
levels of the institutions of international society, insofar as they influence one another.