scholarly journals The Law-in-Action of the International Criminal Court

2005 ◽  
Vol 99 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahnousk H. Arsanjani ◽  
W. Michael Reisman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals

When we are dealing with words that also are a constituent act, like the Constitution of the United States, we must realize that they have called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters. —Missouri v. Holland (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., J.)As the International Criminal Court (ICC) moves from an exhilarating idea to a carefully negotiated document and finally to an operational institution, the cogency of its conception will be tested by the manifold realities of international politics, not the least of which will be the practical and financial limits those realities may place upon investigation and prosecution. The drafters of the Rome Statute benefited from important previous experiments—the Nuremberg Tribunal and the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. But once the Court is launched, the predecessors and prototypes that were so helpful in the drafting stages will be of less and less assistance. The ICC must operate in a substantially different context than the earlier efforts, and the problems it will encounter (and already is encountering) will be different from and may prove more formidable than those facing its prototypes.

The Crime of Aggression: The United States Perspective

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Hongju Koh ◽  
Todd F. Buchwald
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
One Year

At the 2010 Review Conference in Kampala, the states parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided to adopt seven amendments to the Rome Statute that contemplate the possibility of the Court exercising jurisdiction over the crime of aggression subject to certain conditions. One condition was that the exercise of jurisdiction would be “subject to a decision to be taken after 1 January 2017 by the same majority of States Parties as is required for the adoption of an amendment to the Statute,” and another was that such jurisdiction could be exercised “only with respect to crimes of aggression committed one year after the ratification or acceptance of the amendments by thirty States Parties.” As these dates approach, we—two lawyers who represented the United States at the Kampala conference and who worked many hours on the United States’ reengagement with the ICC during the Obama administration—thought it an appropriate moment to take stock of where we are, how we got here, and where we might or should be headed with respect to the crime of aggression.

Part 2 Jurisdiction, Admissibility, and Applicable Law: Compétence, Recevabilité, Et Droit Applicable, Art.12 Preconditions to the exercise of jurisdiction/Conditions préalables à l’exercice de la compétence

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Schabas William A
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
General Rule ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
State Party ◽  
Applicable Law ◽  
Party State

This chapter comments on Article 12 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Article 12 was ‘[p]erhaps the most difficult compromise in the entire negotiations’. At the Rome Conference, there was a range of views on the ‘preconditions’ for jurisdiction, ranging from the narrow proposals of the United States restricting the Court's jurisdiction to nationals of States Parties, to a form of universal jurisdiction by which the Court would be able to prosecute any crime committed anywhere, providing that it could obtain custody over the offender. Article 12 establishes a general rule by which the Court may exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of a State Party and, furthermore, over crimes committed by its nationals anywhere. The Court may also exercise jurisdiction if a non-party State has made a declaration pursuant to article 12(3).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document