Chapter 3 Who are ‘we’ in international criminal law? On critics and membership Immi Tallgren 1 Roadmap This article is devoted to trying to understand those daring to approach critically the project of international criminal law (ICL) that stands for the survival of mankind, justice and peace, at its centre the ICC that ‘is likely to become the central pillar in the world community for upholding fundamen- tal dictates of humanity’ (Cassese 2002: 18). I start by briefly presenting the rhetoric and doctrinal ‘we-talk’ in ICL. I then turn to my focus: are there critical voices separate from the ‘ICL we’ up to a point of forming a ‘critical we’? If so, where do the voices of the ‘critical we’ emanate from and what do they say? I try to situate them in time, space and discourses of the field, and tenta- tively identify the critics’ zones of comfort, as well as the shady backyard of unease. This manner of presenting patterns of thought and positions of actors as fantomatic collectivities has its limits: I will not be able to solve the fundamental issue of why and how do any human ‘we’s of identification, desire, political will, or disciplinary approach to the world come about and thereby also form their ‘them, other’. I am merely flagging questions to be anxious about anytime you or I pronounce a ‘we’: How to engage responsi- bly without being oppressive and patronizing? How to live the concern and commitment without constructing blind alleys of expertise and ownership? How to look and see further than ourselves? We-talk in international criminal law ‘There is a pleasure to say we and not I,’ Emile Durkheim confessed (1963: 203). This is a pleasure often enjoyed in the context of international criminal law (ICL): ‘ We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow,’ stated the American chief prosecutor Justice Robert H. Jackson solemnly in the Nuremberg trials in 1945 (1947: 101). But who is the ‘we’? Whereas one ‘we’ may primarily refer to the victorious nations of a war, organizing trials for those accused of crimes on the defeated side, another ‘we’ evokes the