Global Adjudicative Authority
This chapter examines the relationship between gravity and global adjudicative authority—the global community’s right to create adjudicative institutions, and for those institutions to adjudicate crimes. It argues that such authority is justified when two conditions are met: first, there must be a globally shared norm proscribing the conduct and subjecting violators to criminal sanction; and, second, the global community’s adjudicative goals must be sufficiently important to outweigh any countervailing goals, particularly those of relevant national communities. Additionally, to best promote the regime’s legitimacy, the situations and cases adjudicated must be those that achieve the global community’s most important goals most efficiently. The chapter proposes a reconceptualization of gravity to help ensure these conditions are met.