The Law of War and its Many Distinctions

This chapter focuses on the law of war and its many distinctions. The supreme distinction in this book is between lawful and unlawful. However, in the law of war, the distinctions multiply beyond control. Whether troops fighting abroad constitutes war is itself a disputed question; there has been a tendency in recent years to use “armed conflict” or “police action.” For the purposes of analyzing the Rome Statute and, in particular, Article 8 on war crimes, one has to assume an international perspective. Most countries in the international legal order are not democracies, and the internal allocation of power is not relevant to whether they violate Article 8. The complexity of Article 8 challenges the mind, with at least 50 distinct offenses. The chapter then elaborates on the perspectives necessary to grasp the general structure of war crimes in the international legal order.

Punishment vs. Tort Liability

This chapter focuses on tort liability. In the international legal order, the tort regime is of particular importance. As we shall see, the Alien Tort Claims Act has a vital role to play either as a backup to a failed attempt at criminal prosecution or the inability to get jurisdiction over a defendant in hiding. Thus, the international regime of tort liability responds to the same concerns of “impunidad” as one finds in the Preamble of the Rome Statute. The chapter then looks at the concept of punishment. Punishment is the domain of criminal law. Liability in tort cases is not officially punishment. In fact, punitive damages imposed by an American jury can have more severe consequences than a brief period in jail. Yet the line between crime and tort is maintained strictly in American jurisprudence.

Intention vs. Negligence

This chapter explores the role of mental state in criminal cases, considering the concept of negligence. Lawyers trained in the common law tradition are familiar with the concept of mens rea and the maxim actus non facit reus nisi mens sit rea. Literally this means that there is no criminal (or guilty) act without a criminal (or guilty) mind. The problem is that there are both descriptive and normative interpretations of mens rea and of the maxim. The normative or moral interpretation of mens rea holds that the term equivalent to a guilty mind, for example, a basis for blaming the actor for their conduct, is something not possible in the face of the defenses considered in the last chapter. Meanwhile, negligence is based, as in the classic definition from the law of torts, on the conduct of “a reasonable person under the circumstances.” The important point is that negligence is based on the fault of not knowing.

Victims and Offenders

This chapter assesses the role of victims and offenders in criminal cases. The victim is invisible in the definition of crime but omnipresent in the prosecution and sentencing of offenders. In the international legal order, in particular, the victim is front and center, both in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and in lawsuits under the Alien Torts Claim Act. Crime is typically defined by the actions of the offender, and the victim is an incidental consequence. There are many victimless crimes, such as those in the sexual and reproductive arena, which in the United States at least are no longer subject to prosecution on constitutional grounds. The argument for decriminalization is the privacy of the offender, but privacy of the victim can, paradoxically, become an argument for criminalization under the right to a private life codified in the European Convention on Human Rights. The chapter also looks at the duality of victimhood.

Causation vs. Background Events

This chapter examines the problem of causation. An intelligent approach to drafting a criminal code deliberately avoids certain problematic philosophical issues. Among these are the nature of human action; the purposes of punishment; and, most importantly, the problem of causation. The problem of causation runs through the crimes defined by the Rome Statute. The issue is implicit, even if the drafter wisely declined to define the concept. It is obvious that a concern for impunidad and the fate of victims presuppose the harm that has occurred to a defined victim, which implies that the harm must have been caused by the crimes defined by the Rome Statute. The chapter then considers the notion of causal energy, which explains the rise of comparative negligence in tort law.

Substance and Procedure

This chapter discusses the procedure for prosecuting international crime. Being guilty of an international crime is one thing; being prosecuted and convicted is quite another. Being guilty in principle requires the following: first, an identification of a norm under which the suspect would be guilty if the norm applied to them; second, the application of the norm to the offender to conclude that the particular person is guilty. Initially, this two-stage procedure might take place in the minds of observers, and then, in the minds of people capable of bringing to bear the procedures of the International Criminal Court (ICC) or other international-national tribunals in order to effectuate a conviction. In either case, the notion of liability or guilt requires reasoning in a syllogism. The major premise is the substantive law, and the minor premise consists of the facts that appear to be provable at trial.

Subject vs. Object

This chapter determines the difference between subject and object. The distinction between subject and object pervades the substantive law of war and, in general, the distinction between common law and civil law modes of criminal procedure and their relative influences on the procedures of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Criminal trials presuppose human subjects, agency, and judgment. The players in every trial take on different functions in common law and civil law trials. The notion of the accused’s guilt or innocence as an object of investigation takes on a stronger significance in civilian trials. The chapter then explores the ideal types of common law and civil law criminal procedure: one stressing the subjects as the determinative element and the other emphasizing the object of investigation.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the basic concepts of international criminal law. To understand the international legal order in the field of criminal law, one needs to ask three elementary questions. What is international law? What is criminal law? And what happens to these two fields when they are joined together? International law is about the legal obligations that arise between and among states. Meanwhile, the concepts of crime and criminal law are more complex than meets the eye. The chapter then considers the Dogmatik of international criminal law and the relevance of the law of war. The most significant contribution of the Dogmatik for criminal law was the invention of the tripartite system, namely the three levels of analysis that determine the structure of every criminal offense.

Perpetration and Complicity

This chapter examines the concept of complicity. The basic question is whether complicity is a crime in and of itself or a way of assisting another person to commit a crime. On the whole, the idea of complicity in the actions of another has become a standard part of modern legal and moral thought. One no longer thinks of individuals acting solely on their own account but of groups of people interacting in order to produce a crime of shared responsibility. This is particularly true in the crimes of genocide, aggression, and crimes against humanity. As for holding individual actors accountable, as Article 25 of the Rome Statute attempts to do, it would make sense to hold each liable for their causal role in the crime. That is, complicity should be seen not as a crime in itself but as a contribution to the crime of another.

Harming vs. Trying

This chapter assesses whether the codification of criminal attempts in a statutory regime that emphasizes completed crimes with consequences to personal or property interests is appropriate. A quick look at the four crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), as described by the Rome Statute, reveals that they are about concrete harming: killing, torture, rape, and invasion. Some of the sub-crimes within these categories address completed actions even though the harm is less tangible. However, attempts are one form of inchoate offense, that is, offenses that fall short of causing the harm or engendering the victimhood that would come with the completed offense. The problem is always how much the actor must do on the spectrum—from thought through the various stages of action to the final result of causing harm or instantiating the required “consequence” of the completed offenses.