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.

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.

s.III Rationales, Ch.9 Taking Internationalism Seriously: Why International Criminal Law Matters

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gur-Arye Miriam ◽  
Harel Alon
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Justice ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Penal Institutions ◽  
Traditional Institutions ◽  
Domestic Level

This chapter focuses on why international criminal law (ICL) matters, by generating a distinctive philosophical vision for the project of international criminal justice. Specifically, this chapter rejects the notion that ICL is simply a gap-filler for ineffective penal institutions at the domestic level. So much of the literature is characterized by an assumption, buttressed by the International Criminal Court’s complementarity principle, that international tribunals simply spring into action to resolve the lacunae in domestic legal processes when armed conflict or other disruptions dismantle traditional institutions for criminal enforcement. In contrast, the chapter argues that the goods of ICL and the values it promotes can only be provided by international entities. In that respect, international justice is not a second-best alternative to domestic justice but is, rather, necessarily international because international institutions are specifically designed to redress wrongs that harm the interests of the international community as a whole.

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’.

The Law of Sentencing in International Criminal Law: The Purposes of Sentencing and the Applicable Method for the Determination of the Sentence

2001 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 87-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Christoph Nemitz
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Justice System ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Objective Understanding ◽  
The Law ◽  
And Control ◽  
Legal Grounds

‘Sentencing is an art and not a science’. This statement of Lord Lane expresses, with all due respect, what sentencing should not be. Although it cannot be denied that the process of determining a sentence is far from being a mathematical exercise, the result of which can be verified or falsified by reference to some unquestionable law of nature, both the legislator and the judiciary must strive for the development of a law of sentencing which is based on a comprehensive set of statutory provisions. The very term ‘lawof sentencing’ indicates that the meting out of a sentence is more than the exercise of a skill that only judges are vested with. The use of the term ‘art’, conversely, to describe sentencing gives the impression that the act of sentencing is beyond objective understanding and control. When we speak of art, we acknowledge that while views on the outcome can be manifold, objective criteria for a ‘correct’ assessment are few: there's no accounting for taste. This is unacceptable when looking at the significance of the law of sentencing for the pursuit of various sentencing purposes. To base the determination of the sentence on legal grounds enhances the review possibilities with regard to sentencing judgments. This contributes to an even sentencing practice, which in turn leads to just and comprehensible sentencing judgments. Such a practice is necessary in order to achieve public acceptance of the criminal justice system in general and of sentencing verdicts in particular. Such acceptance is imperative for the achievement of several sentencing purposes, especially that of affirmative (or positive) general prevention.

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.

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.

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