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The Lisbon Treaty consolidated, clarified and shifted the division of European Union competences in matters of criminal law. These are the developments that this chapter explores. Starting with the legal framework introduced by the Lisbon treaty, the chapter lays down both the conferred competences and the legal limits to them. The chapter then turns to the specifics of the Union’s procedural, institutional and substantive competences, elaborating upon the interplay between the competences in law and jurisprudence. To augment those parts of the legal texts that are not exhaustive, the chapter concludes by reflecting on the Court of Justice’s post-Lisbon jurisprudence on criminal competences, in which the Court has been attuning its doctrines to the challenges arising from the Lisbon legal framework for criminal justice.

This afterword to the volume offers critical reflections on the book’s major contributions and situates them in relation to wider debates over the future of the International Criminal Court, the possibilities for international justice, and the question of whether or not human rights should remain an important part of international law. More specifically, the afterword examines the ways in which the volume privileges a distance-near perspective on the relationship between law and culture at the ICC, including, importantly, insiders’ accounts of how culture shapes the inner workings of the Court, its administrative and prosecutorial activities, and its responses to wider critiques of its investigations. The afterword concludes by considering the volume’s central claim that it is through a study of the intersections of law and culture that we can best understand the dilemmas faced by the Court and its prospects for the future.