A Brief History of International Criminal Law and International Criminal Court

Author(s):  
Cenap Çakmak
2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (42) ◽  
pp. 74-85
Author(s):  
Oleksandra Huzik

Abstract This work analyzes the practice of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the most ambitious project aimed at combating and preventing mass violations of human rights in inter-and intrastate conflicts. Sure thing, such an institution has not emerged from anywhere, but it is the culmination in the progress of international criminal law evolution. That is why the progress that was made over the centuries and historical conditions forcing its establishment cannot be ignored. This article studies the formation of the International Criminal Court through the prism of the history of previous models of judicial bodies bringing to justice war criminals. Moreover, it analyses the historical conditions and international debates around the establishment of a permanent international criminal court. Conclusions focus on the problems that arose during the establishment of the ICC, and the ways in which they affect ICC activities nowadays.


Author(s):  
Tiyanjana Maluwa

The chapter discusses the concepts of shared values and value-based norms. It examines two areas of international law that provide illustrative examples of contestation of value-based norms: the fight against impunity under international criminal law and the debates about the responsibility to protect. It argues that the African Union’s (AU) difference of view with the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the indictment of Omar Al-Bashir is not a rejection of the non-impunity norm, but of the context and sequencing of its application. As regards the right of intervention codified in the Constitutive Act of the AU, Africans states responded to the failure of the Security Council to invoke its existing normative powers in the Rwanda situation by establishing a treaty-based norm of intervention, the first time that a regional international instrument had ever done so. Thus, in both cases one cannot speak of a decline of international law.


Author(s):  
Schwöbel-Patel Christine

The ‘core’ crimes set out in the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute - the crime of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression - are overwhelmingly assumed to be the most important international crimes. In this chapter, I unsettle the assumption of their inherent importance by revealing and problematising the civilizational, political-economic, and aesthetical biases behind designating these crimes as ‘core’. This is done by shedding light on discontinuities in the history of the core crimes, and unsettling the progress narrative ‘from Nuremberg to Rome’. More specifically, crimes associated with drug control are placed in conversation with the accepted history of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to exemplify a systematic editing of the dominant narrative of international criminal law.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
Bing Bing Jia

Legacy is a matter that may become topical when its creator finally stops producing. Normally, the silent years would be many before the thought of legacy enters into open, formal discourse among lawyers and decision-makers. This comment treats the meaning of the word as relative to the circumstances in which it is invoked. The more closely it is used in relation to the present, the more distant it drifts from its literal meaning, to the extent that it denotes what the word “impact” signifies. This essay questions whether the word “legacy” is apt in describing the footprint of the work of the two ad hoctribunals in China, where its influence has, as a matter of fact, been waning ever since the adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998 (“Rome Statute” ). The Chinese example suggests that the work of the tribunals is (at least so far) no more significant to international criminal law than the illustrious Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials of the 1940s. The most major impact (a more apposite term than legacy) of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for China may be that China’s policy with regard to the tribunals, manifested mostly in the United Nations, has determined its approach to the International Criminal Court (“ICC” ). For that, the work of the tribunals could be considered as having left China something in the nature of an indirect legacy.


Author(s):  
Schabas William A

This chapter comments on Article 27 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Article 27 consists two paragraphs that are often confounded but fulfil different functions. Paragraph 1 denies a defence of official capacity, i.e. official capacity as a Head of State or Government, a member of a Government or parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall not exempt a person from criminal responsibility under the Statute. Paragraph 2 amounts to a renunciation, by States Parties to the Rome Statute, of the immunity of their own Head of State to which they are entitled by virtue of customary international law. In contrast with paragraph 1, it is without precedent in international criminal law instruments.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 803-827 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie O'Brien

AbstractAllegations and confirmed cases of misconduct by peacekeeping personnel have been revealed by non-governmental organisations, the press and UN investigations. The majority of misconduct has fallen under the term 'sexual exploitation and abuse'. Sexual exploitation and abuse has encompassed rape, sex with minors, trafficking, prostitution-related conduct, sexual exploitation, and other sexual abuse. This article discusses accountability in international criminal law for such conduct, first exploring the development of gender-based crime in international criminal law. The core of this article consists of an examination of the applicable law under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, to determine whether or not the provisions could be used to prosecute peacekeepers for the crimes of rape, sexual slavery, sexual exploitation, prostitution-related conduct, and trafficking. Real life examples of criminal conduct by peacekeeping personnel will be given to test the applicability of the Rome Statute provisions.


2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 229-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harmen van der Wilt

AbstractThe Rome Statute contains a body of legal standards on elements of the offences, concepts of criminal responsibility and defences of unprecedented detail. Whereas these standards serve the International Criminal Court as normative framework, the principle of complementarity implies that domestic jurisdictions are to take the lead in the adjudication of international crimes.This article addresses the question whether domestic legislators and courts are bound to meticulously apply the international standards, or whether they are left some leeway to apply their own (criminal) law. The article starts with a survey of the actual performance of national jurisdictions. Current international law does not explicitly compel states to copy the international standards; at most one might argue that the codification of international criminal law and the principle of complementarity encourage harmonization.Capitalizing on the concept of 'open texture of law' and the methodology of casuistry, the present author argues that a certain measure of diversity in the interpretation and application of international standards is inevitable and even desirable. However, as a general rule, states have less freedom of interpretation in respect of the elements of crimes than in the application of concepts of responsibility and defences.


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