The 2009 AIDP's Resolution on Universal Jurisdiction – An Epitaph or a Revival Call?!

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maja Munivrana Vajda
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Association ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Universal Jurisdiction ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Controversial Subject ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Penal Law

AbstractAt its 18th session held in September 2009, the Congress of the International Association of Penal Law adopted the Resolution on Universal Jurisdiction (RUJ). For the past decade, universal jurisdiction has been one of the most debated issues in international criminal law, and the RUJ has been expected to shed valuable light on this controversial subject matter. After setting out the rationale and scope of universal jurisdiction, the RUJ regulates its exercise and subjects it to a number of requirements and limitations. The drafters should be commended for their general support of the idea that states can exercise universal jurisdiction over a limited number of international crimes. However, the RUJ does suffer from a number of weaknesses. Whether it will ultimately serve as a point of reference for state legislators and practitioners therefore remains to be seen.

Two cheers for the impunity norm

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 487-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Pensky
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current State

International criminal law (ICL) is dedicated to the battle against impunity. However, the concept of impunity lacks clarity. Providing that clarity also reveals challenges for the current state and future prospects of the project of ICL, which this article frames in cosmopolitan terms. The ‘impunity norm’ of ICL is generally presented in a deontic form. It holds that impunity for perpetrators of international crimes is a wrong so profound that states and international bodies have a pro tanto duty to prosecute and punish perpetrators, a duty that cannot be overridden by considerations of cost, including the costs of infringing on the traditionally understood legal sovereignty of states. This deontic reading of the impunity norm is difficult to justify, a fact linked to the waning fortunes of ICL over the past several years. If ICL is to reverse this trend, the impunity norm’s strongly deontic reading should be replaced by a version derived from deliberative principles.

The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals

In the past twenty years, international criminal law has become one of the main areas of international legal scholarship and practice. Most textbooks in the field describe the evolution of international criminal tribunals, the elements of the core international crimes, the applicable modes of liability and defences, and the role of states in prosecuting international crimes. This book, however, takes a theoretically informed and refreshingly critical look at the most controversial issues in international criminal law, challenging prevailing practices, orthodoxies, and received wisdoms. The book should fundamentally alter how international criminal law is understood.

scholarly journals The Quiet Expansion of Universal Jurisdiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 779-817 ◽  
Author(s):  
Máximo Langer ◽  
Mackenzie Eason
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Universal Jurisdiction ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Institutional Learning ◽  
Geographical Scope

Abstract Based on an original worldwide survey of all universal jurisdiction complaints over core international crimes presented between 1961 and 2017 and against widespread perception by international criminal law experts that universal jurisdiction is in decline, this article shows that universal jurisdiction practice has been quietly expanding as there has been a significant growth in the number of universal jurisdiction trials, in the frequency with which these trials take place year by year and in the geographical scope of universal jurisdiction litigation. This expansion is likely the result of, among other factors, the adoption of International Criminal Court implementing statutes, the creation of specialized international crimes units by states, institutional learning by states and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), technological changes, new migration and refugee waves to universal jurisdiction states, criticisms of international criminal law as neo-colonial and the search of new venues by human rights NGOs. The expansion of universal jurisdiction has been quiet because most tried defendants have been low-level, universal jurisdiction states have not made an effort to publicize these trials and observers have wrongly assumed that Belgium and Spain were representative of universal jurisdiction trends. The article finally assesses positive and negative aspects of the quiet expansion of universal jurisdiction for its defenders and critics.

Domesticating Atrocity Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 50-78
Author(s):  
Mark S. Berlin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Association ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Current Phase ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Penal Law

This chapter traces the history of efforts to domesticate international atrocity law, which provides initial plausibility for the book’s central argument. The chapter locates the origins of atrocity laws in the decades prior to World War II with a community of influential European criminal law scholars, most of whom were leaders of the International Association of Penal Law (AIDP). Following the war, some of these experts helped draft the first international atrocity law treaties, and the enforcement regimes they designed relied on national enforcement through domestic legislation. Four phases of atrocity law adoption then followed. In the first phase (1945–1957), the adoption of atrocity laws was driven mostly by principled norm entrepreneurs who were actively committed to the advancement of an international criminal law regime. In the second phase (1957–1985), professionalization and emulation became central drivers of domestic atrocity criminalization. As national governments all over the world drafted new criminal codes, transnational professional influences conditioned technocratic drafters to see atrocity criminalization as important for a modern criminal code. In the third phase (1985–1998), a new wave of domestic and international attempts to prosecute government officials for past atrocities, coupled with a resurgence of foreign technical legal assistance, helped foster the conditions that made atrocity criminalization salient beyond a specialized community of professional criminal law experts. Finally, in the current phase (1998–present), international civil society groups, inspired by the creation of the International Criminal Court, have undertaken concerted public advocacy efforts to promote the domestication of atrocity law.

Part IV Transnational Organised Crime as Matter of Certain Branches of International Law, 21 Transnational Organised Crime and International Criminal Law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hauck Pierre
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Organised Crime ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Universal Jurisdiction ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
International Crimes

At first sight, transnational organised crime (TOC) and international criminal law (ICL) are completely separate: the four ICL core crimes constitute the most heinous crimes, committed by political and military leaders of armed conflicts, whereas TOC as lower-level deviance being committed by private individuals falls short of that. This chapter takes a closer look at this relationship and discovers the lines between these two areas to be blurred: because, as international crimes, they have already been discussed in that context (e.g. while drafting the Rome Statute), and nowadays TOC can even amount to one of the four core crimes de lege lata in individual cases. Apart from that, TOC can also evolve into international crimes de lege ferenda once universal jurisdiction can be established. The chapter concludes that although TOC typically characterizes crime that is different to the four core ICL crimes, both areas approximate greatly in different ways.

The ‘Responsibility to Prosecute’ Core International Crimes? The Case of German Universal Jurisdiction and the Syrian Government

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 394-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Rankin
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Universal Jurisdiction ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Public Prosecutor ◽  
Senior Member ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Willingness To Use

Arguably, more than any other state or interstate actor, German federal authorities, including the German Federal Public Prosecutor General (Generalbundesanwalt, gba) and German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), have been at the forefront of issuing arrest warrants for senior members of the Syrian government suspected of atrocity crimes in the wake of the Arab Spring. This includes German federal authorities making the first arrest of a senior member of the Syrian government in February 2019 for crimes against humanity. This article argues that in relation to core international crimes, Germany’s concept of law reflects one based on a ‘standard’ and international rule of law. Moreover, German federal authorities have demonstrated a willingness to use international humanitarian and criminal law (ichl) in relation to those most responsible for core international crimes. In this way, Germany’s current investigations into alleged crimes against humanity in Syria since 2011 provides for an illuminating case for extending universal jurisdiction, as well as the ‘responsibility to prosecute’ as a legal obligation. It also indicates how a multiplicity of actors – including state and non-state actors – can extend the reach of international criminal law, when the International Criminal Court (icc) cannot act.

Could International Fact-Finding Missions Possibly Render a Case Inadmissible for the ICC? Remarks on the Ongoing Attempts to Include International Criminal Law in Fact-finding

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry de Vries
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fact Finding ◽  
Individual Criminal Responsibility

Abstract Twenty years after the adoption of the Rome Statute questions concerning complementarity remain. There is no clear indication as to how international involvement would influence the admissibility of a case. One of the responses to human rights violations and possible international crimes that has risen to prominence in the past decades is fact-finding mandated by UN organs. At the same time these mechanisms have started to incorporate a focus on issues of international criminal law and individual criminal responsibility. As these mechanisms are starting to attempt to resemble a criminal investigation in some regards the question starts to rise as to what effect an international fact-finding mechanism can have on the admissibility of a case before the International Criminal Court. This article explains how these mechanisms need to be viewed in the context of the complementarity-regime of the Rome Statute.

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW AND AR (AZERBAIJAN REPUBLIC) LEGISLATION GENOCIDE CRIME AND ITS COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH OTHER INTERNATIONAL CRIMES

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (04) ◽  
pp. 48-52
Author(s):  
Erkin Humbat Musayev Humbat Musayev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
International Law ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Transnational Crime ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Crimes

Key words: international law, international criminal law, genocide, war crimes, transnational crime

scholarly journals Nullum Crimen and International Criminal Law: The Relevance of the Foreseeability Test

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-531
Author(s):  
Harmen van der Wilt
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
European Court ◽  
Starting Point

This article traces the development of the foreseeability test in the context of the nullum crimen principle. While the European Court of Human Rights has introduced the ‘accessibility and foreseeability’ criteria long ago in the Sunday Times case, the Court has only recently started to apply this standard with respect to international crimes. In the Kononov case, judges of the European Court of Human Rights exhibited strongly divergent opinions on the question whether the punishment of alleged war crimes that had been committed in 1944 violated the nullum crimen principle. According to this author, the dissension of the judges demonstrates the lack of objective foreseeability, which should have served as a starting point for the assessment of the subjective foreseeability and a – potentially exculpating – mistake of law of the perpetrator. The Court should therefore have concluded that the nullum crimen principle had been violated.

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