Hybridization— A Spectrum of Creative Possibilities

This chapter assesses the emerging preference for hybrid judicial institutions. Recent years have seen a spate of hybrid tribunals established or proposed, from Syria and South Sudan, to the Central African Republic and Sri Lanka. Perhaps most prominently, a hybrid court was set up in Dakar, Senegal, to prosecute former Chadian President Hissène Habré in 2013, a development that has stood out as the vanguard of a new generation of hybrid tribunals. The re-emergence of the hybrid tribunal has been addressed by numerous scholars. Yet despite its renewed popularity, it remains unclear what, precisely, it means to be a hybrid court and how the latest hybrids might contribute to furthering the project of international criminal justice. The answer to the first question is typically assumed to be simple: hybrid tribunals are ‘of mixed composition and jurisdiction, encompassing both national and international aspects, usually operating within the jurisdiction where the crimes occurred’. However, hybrid tribunals are much more than just middle-ground institutions that marry national and international components. As this chapter demonstrates, they are institutions whose very hybridity creates productive space for creative solutions aimed at responding to some of the most endemic challenges facing international criminal justice.