A Brief History Of International Criminal Law And International Criminal Court

This book offers a historical presentation of how international criminal law has evolved from a national setting to embodying a truly international outlook. As a growing part of international law this is an area that has attracted growing attention as a result of the mass atrocities and heinous crimes committed in different parts of the world. Çakmak pays particular attention to how the first permanent international criminal court was created and goes on to show how solutions developed to address international crimes have remained inadequate and failed to restore justice. Calling for a truly global approach as the only real solution to dealing with the most severe international crimes, this text will be of great interest to scholars of criminal justice, political science, and international relations.

The International Criminal Court ushers in a new era in the protection of human rights. The ICC prosecutes genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes when national justice systems are either unwilling or unable to do so themselves. Schabas reviews the history of international criminal prosecution, the drafting of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the principles of its operation, including the scope of its jurisdiction and the procedural regime. This revised edition considers the court's start-up preparations, including election of judges and prosecutor. It also addresses the difficulties created by US opposition, and analyses the various measures taken by Washington to obstruct the Court. Three of the Court's fundamental documents - the 1998 Rome Statute, the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, and the Elements of Crimes - are reproduced in the Appendix. Indispensable for students and practitioners.

The language of international criminal law has considerable traction in global politics, and much of its legitimacy is embedded in apparently 'axiomatic' historical truths. This innovative edited collection brings together some of the world's leading international lawyers with a very clear mandate in mind: to re-evaluate ('retry') the dominant historiographical tradition in the field of international criminal law. Carefully curated, and with contributions by leading scholars, The New Histories of International Criminal Law pursues three research objectives: to bring to the fore the structure and function of contemporary histories of international criminal law, to take issue with the consequences of these histories, and to call for their demystification. The essays discern several registers on which the received historiographical tradition must be retried: tropology; inclusions/exclusions; gender; race; representations of the victim and the perpetrator; history and memory; ideology and master narratives; international criminal law and hegemonic theories; and more. This book intervenes critically in the fields of international criminal law and international legal history by bringing in new voices and fresh approaches. Taken as a whole, it provides a rich account of the dilemmas, conundrums, and possibilities entailed in writing histories of international criminal law beyond, against, or in the shadow of the master narrative.

This unique work is an article-by-article drafting history of the ICC Statute containing all versions of every article in the Statute as it evolved from 1994 to 1998. It also integrates in the Statute's provisions the "Elements of the Crimes" and the "Rules of Procedure and Evidence" adopted by the Preparatory Commission (1998-2000) and the Regulations of the Court adopted by the plenary of judges. Other relevant documents are also included, such as those concerning the privileges and immunities and financial regulations of the Court, as well as its relationship with the United Nations.

This title covers the history, nature, and sources of international criminal law; the ratione personae; ratione materiae - sources of substantive international criminal law; the indirect enforcement system; the direct enforcement system; and much more.

This book is about the International Criminal Court (ICC), a new and highly distinctive criminal justice institution with the ability to prosecute the highest-level government officials, including heads of state, even in countries that have not accepted its jurisdiction. The book explores the historical development of international criminal law and the formal legal structure created by the Rome Statute, against the background of the Court’s search for objectivity in a political global environment. The book reviews the operations of the Court in practice and the Court’s position in the power politics of the international system. It discusses and clarifies all stages of an international criminal proceeding from the opening of the investigation to sentencing, reparations, and final appeals in the context of its restorative justice mission. Making appropriate comparisons and contrasts between the international criminal justice system and domestic and national systems, the book fills a gap in international criminal justice study.

This book argues for a more moderate approach to history-writing in international criminal adjudication by articulating the elements of a “responsible history” normative framework. The question of whether international criminal courts and tribunals (ICTs) ought to write historical narratives has gained renewed relevance in the context of the recent turn to history in international criminal law, the growing attention to the historical legacies of the ad hoc Tribunals and the minimal attention paid to historical context in the first judgment of the International Criminal Court. The starting point for this discussion is that, in cases of mass atrocities, prosecutors and judges are inevitably understood to be engaged in writing history and influencing collective memory, whether or not they so intend. Therefore, while writing history is an inescapable feature of ICTs, there is still today a significant lack of consensus over the proper place of this function. Since Hannah Arendt articulated her doctrine of strict legality, in response to the prosecutor’s expansive didactic approach in Eichmann, the legal debate on the subject has been largely polarised between restrictive and expansive approaches to history-writing in mass atrocity trials. What has been noticeably missing from this debate is the middle ground. The contribution this book seeks to make is precisely to articulate a framework that occupies that ground. The book asks: what are the lenses through which judges of ICTs interpret historical events, what kind of histories do ICTs write? and what kinds of histories should ICTs produce? Its arguments for a more moderate approach to history-writing are based on three distinct, but interrelated grounds: (1) Truth and Justice; (2) Right to Truth; and (3) Legal Epistemology. Different target audiences may benefit from this book. Court officials and legal practitioners may find the normative framework developed herein useful in addressing the tensions between the competing objectives of ICTs and, in particular, in assessing the value of the history-writing function. Lawyers, historians and other academics may also find the analysis of the strengths, constraints and blind spots of the historical narratives written by ICTs interesting. This issue is particularly timely in view of current debates on the legacies of ICTs. Aldo Zammit Borda is Director of the Centre for Access to Justice and Inclusion at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK.