Epilogue : Future Developments of International Criminal Law in relation to the Responsibility of Superiors for International Crimes

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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A Strategic Choice: The State Policy Requirement in Core International Crimes

Leiden Journal of International Law ◽

10.1017/s0922156515000539 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 28 (4) ◽

pp. 953-975 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

ATHANASIOS CHOULIARAS

Keyword(s):

Criminal Law ◽

State Policy ◽

International Criminal ◽

Criminal Policy ◽

The State ◽

International Criminal Law ◽

Controversial Issues ◽

Policy Perspective ◽

International Crimes ◽

Definition Of

AbstractThe article focuses on one of the most intriguing and, at the same time, controversial issues of international criminal law: whether the state policy requirement should be considered as a constitutive element in core international crimes. Adopting a criminal policy perspective, my intention is to contribute to the ongoing discussion by offering a doctrinal and criminological corroboration of the position that answers in the affirmative. Nevertheless, I am not necessarily promoting a normative choice entailing the amendment of the definition of core international crimes, but I rather call for a policy choice of focusing on cases that presume a state policy component.

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Recharacterisation of Crimes and the Principle of Fair Labelling in International Criminal Law

International Criminal Law Review ◽

10.1163/15718123-01805005 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 18 (5) ◽

pp. 788-821

Author(s):

Talita de Souza Dias

Keyword(s):

Criminal Law ◽

International Criminal ◽

Fair Trial ◽

Comprehensive Analysis ◽

International Criminal Law ◽

Crimes Against Humanity ◽

Legal Scholarship ◽

International Crimes ◽

The Creation ◽

Central Claim

The principle of fair labelling has informed the creation of international crimes and other concepts of international criminal law since the modern inception of this discipline. In particular, it was the symbolic and condemnatory import of international labels such as genocide and crimes against humanity that partly motivated their introduction as offences separate from domestic ordinary crimes. Paradoxically, fair labelling has received marginal attention in legal scholarship and practice. Moreover, frequent instances of relabelling known as ‘recharacterisation of crimes’ may not be entirely consistent with that principle, inviting further analysis thereof. In this context, the purpose of this article is to provide a more systematic and comprehensive analysis of the principle of fair labelling in international criminal law, particularly in light of the phenomenon of recharacterisation of crimes. Its central claim is that fair labelling is as a fair trial right which precludes recourse to recharacterisation in certain circumstances.

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‘We Demand Dignity for the Victims’ – Reflections on the Legal Qualification of the Indecent Disposal of Corpses

International Criminal Law Review ◽

10.1163/15718123-01505003 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 15 (5) ◽

pp. 896-925 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Caroline Fournet ◽

Nicole Siller

Keyword(s):

Case Studies ◽

Criminal Law ◽

International Criminal ◽

Foreign Affairs ◽

International Criminal Law ◽

International Humanitarian Law ◽

Humanitarian Law ◽

Human Beings ◽

International Crimes ◽

Trafficking In Human Beings

‘We demand dignity for the victims’. Such was the pledge of the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs following the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight mh17 in rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine and the looting of the corpses of the 298 victims. Although not an isolated instance, the indecent disposal of the corpses of the victims seems to have escaped legal scrutiny. Drawing from this and other case studies, this article addresses the legal qualification of acts of mistreatment perpetrated against the corpses of victims of international crimes. It analyses all relevant dispositions pertaining to international humanitarian law, international criminal law and the law of trafficking in human beings. While these provisions fail to legally characterize such acts, the judiciary however tends to recognize their criminality; a recognition which, in the authors’ views, could make its way into the text of international (criminal) law.

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Fighting the Scourge of International Crime

Remaking Central Europe ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198854685.003.0011 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 241-258

Author(s):

David Petruccelli

Keyword(s):

Eastern Europe ◽

Criminal Law ◽

Sex Trafficking ◽

Central And Eastern Europe ◽

International Criminal ◽

International Crime ◽

League Of Nations ◽

International Criminal Law ◽

Drug Trade ◽

International Crimes

This chapter examines initiatives to organize the global fight against international crime, which emerged in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1920s and which by the 1930s posed an alternative to the imperial and liberal internationalist programmes pursued by many Western Europeans and Americans. Police, especially from Austria, sought to internationalize policing through the International Criminal Police Commission (today Interpol). At the same time, jurists from the region sought to unify norms for fighting international crimes as a first step towards a broader project of founding a body of international criminal law. Both programmes responded to the particular social and demographic problems engulfing the region after the collapse of Europe’s great land empires. By the 1930s, these post-imperial and often illiberal programmes increasingly set the agenda at the League of Nations on a range of international offences, notably the drug trade and sex trafficking.

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

The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law ◽

10.1093/law/9780198825203.003.0034 ◽

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.

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International Criminal Law and International Crimes

Handbook of Transnational Crime and Justice ◽

10.4135/9781452281995.n15 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 263-280

Author(s):

Grant Niemann

Keyword(s):

Criminal Law ◽

International Criminal ◽

International Criminal Law ◽

International Crimes

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The Dangers of the Obvious but Often Disregarded Details in the International Criminal Law Demarcation Debate: Norm-Integration and the Triple-Thesis ‘Argument’

International Criminal Law Review ◽

10.1163/15718123-02001001 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 20 (5) ◽

pp. 759-783

Author(s):

Anja Matwijkiw

Keyword(s):

Criminal Law ◽

International Criminal ◽

International Criminal Law ◽

International Humanitarian Law ◽

International Human Rights Law ◽

Humanitarian Law ◽

Human Rights Law ◽

International Human Rights ◽

International Crimes ◽

Post Conflict

When responses to international crimes are managed in terms of post-conflict justice, this event may end ‘the demarcation debate’ before it has begun, thereby rendering it superfluous among legal scholars. This is to say that the transition from theory to reality arguably has the effect of cancelling any sharp distinction between international criminal law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law, as well as extending international criminal justice into the moral territory. Certainly, this is a premise for the dual-aspect defense of those rights that help to explain the non-separation. However, to the extent that the defense discords with traditional assumptions, relevant aspects of pro-separation reasoning must be considered. These are accommodated under the triple-thesis whereby the unequal status of different (rights-)categories limit norm-integration. The author’s account of the competing programs shows a series of flaws in the case of the triple-thesis doctrine, amounting to a vicious circle ‘argument’.

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Part V Procedural and Technological Challenges for the Investigation of TOC—Policing, Technological Aspects, Efficiency, Exchange of Information, Abuse of Power, and Tactics for Conducting Investigations, 22 Policing TOC—The National Perspective: Challenges, Strategies, Tactics

10.1093/law/9780198733737.003.0022 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Brady Sheelagh

Keyword(s):

Criminal Law ◽

Rome Statute ◽

International Criminal ◽

Organised Crime ◽

Armed Conflicts ◽

International Criminal Law ◽

Military Leaders ◽

Abuse Of Power ◽

International Crimes ◽

National Perspective

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.

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