A Brief History of Gravity

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-60
Author(s):  
Margaret M. deGuzman
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Historical Circumstance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Necessity

This chapter describes the evolution of gravity in the development of international criminal law’s legal and moral norms. It shows that the regime’s strong reliance on gravity is more a matter of historical circumstance than of moral necessity. Gravity’s centrality in international criminal law was not inevitable. International criminal law could have developed to address crimes like drug trafficking that cross borders, or crimes like piracy that are committed outside any state’s territory. Instead, due to the historical context in which it evolved, international criminal law came to rely for its legitimacy on the idea that it addresses particularly serious crimes.

The Transnationalisation of Criminal Law in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
International Expert ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Crime ◽  
Normative Order

The volume contains nine case studies on the recent history of transnational criminal law, having emerged from current international research projects. The papers cover cross-border political crime and security threats, extradition and expulsion, police cooperation and international expert discussions on social crime and torture. The focus is less on event-historical phenomena, but on transnational legal-political interactions of different actors. The contributions thus analyze the historical development of transnational criminal law as a form of temporally, spatially and legally limited criminal law and security regimes. As a result, the volume shows that the investigated transnationalization of criminal law in the 19th and 20th centuries did not lead to a cohesive normative order, thus offering legal-historical interpretations of current problems of international criminal law.

s.VIII Boundaries, Ch.33 The Core Crimes of International Criminal Law

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Schwöbel-Patel Christine
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic

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.

The crime of apartheid: genealogy of a successful failure

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-214
Author(s):  
Adam Sitze
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
History Of

Abstract This article argues that international criminal law implies a specific form of conscience. It then traces the vicissitudes of that conscience throughout the history of the criminalisation of apartheid in international law. It concludes with three theses about the concept of ‘global apartheid’.

Selectivity in International Criminal Law: An Assessment of the ‘Progress Narrative’

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 642-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Vartan Armenian
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Gradual Improvement ◽  
Short Period ◽  
History Of

The rapid development of international criminal law over a relatively short period of time has encouraged some commentators to construct linear, ‘progress narratives’ when writing on the history of the field. Such narratives depict international criminal law as subject to gradual improvement, starting as a highly politicised, abstract collection of principles, but eventually emerging as a neatly contoured, legitimate framework. However, from its inception, international criminal law has been inseparable from the selective application (or non-application) as well as selective creation (or non-creation) of law. Selectivity has taken numerous forms over the decades, and in some instances, has proven to be useful. However, as long as selectivity continues to exist, international criminal law will remain at odds with our wider conceptions of law.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Appeals Chamber: Decisions on the Legality of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and Trials In Absentia

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-216
Author(s):  
Martin Wählisch
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Justice System ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Justice ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
History Of

In October and November of 2012, the Appeals Chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) issued two key decisions affirming the legality of the court and the use of trials in absentia of the accused. Highly disputed within Lebanon and throughout the international legal community, both decisions are crucial milestones in the developing history of the STL, and mark critical developments in the evolution of the international justice system and international criminal law.

Unprecedents

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-29
Author(s):  
Gerry Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
History Of

In its judicial-doctrinal life, the establishment of an international criminal law has necessitated a sometimes half-hearted search for a history of largely inadequate ‘precedents’ in the context of the punishment of acts that are also said to be ‘unprecedented’ and in the shadow of a suspicion that the criminalization of such acts is itself ‘unprecedented’. Putting all of this together, we might say that what we have is a law of unprecedentedness to which it could be useful to apply a counter-history of unprecedents or unprecedenting or, even, re-precedenting. This idea of ‘unprecedents’ (a neologism that some people will be find unattractive), then, ought to make visible some pathologies, elisions, repressions, around—in one instance a possibility inherent in—international criminal law.

Postericide and Intergenerational Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catriona McKinnon
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
International Crime ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Future People ◽  
Moral Necessity ◽  
Intergenerational Ethics

In the Anthropocene, future people are dangerously vulnerable to the conduct of present people. The advances made by humanity since the Industrial Revolution give the current generation the ability to damage and degrade the environment in ways that could make humanity go extinct. What measures should be taken to protect future people from the dangers of extinction they face? This chapter outlines a new international crime of postericide as a morally required response to humanity’s changed circumstances. Postericide is committed when an agent intentionally or recklessly performs conduct fit to bring about the extinction of humanity. International criminal law contains no precedents for the prosecution of postericide. A proper understanding of the moral imperatives embodied in international criminal law shows that it is, in this respect, incomplete. Drawing on political and legal theory, moral philosophy, and jurisprudence, this chapter defends postericide as a moral necessity in the Anthropocene, and shows how it is entailed by the ideals at the heart of international criminal law.

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