The Crime Of Aggression In International Criminal Law

Since after the Second World War, the crime of aggression is – along with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes – a “core crime” under international law. However, despite a formal recognition of aggression as a matter of international criminal law and the reinforcement of the international legal regulation of the use of force by States, numerous international armed conflicts occurred but no one was ever prosecuted for aggression since 1949. This book comprehensively analyses the historical development of the criminalisation of aggression, scrutinises in a detailed manner the relevant jurisprudence of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals as well as of the Nuremberg follow-up trials, and makes proposals for a more successful prosecution for aggression in the future. In identifying customary international law on the subject, the volume draws upon a wealth of applicable sources of national criminal law and puts forward a useful classification of States ́ legislative approaches towards the criminalisation of aggression at the national level. It also offers a detailed analysis of the current international legal regulation of the use of force and of the Rome Statute ́s substantive and procedural provisions pertaining to the exercise of the International Criminal Court ́s jurisdiction with respect to the crime of aggression, after 1 January 2017.

An analysis of the crime of aggression amendments adopted under the International Criminal Court's Statute in 2010.

This book presents a selection of revised and updated papers presented in September 2018 at the International Conference ‘Rethinking the Crime of Aggression: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives’, which was held in Marburg, Germany, and hosted by the International Research and Documentation Centre for War Crimes Trials (ICWC). In light of the activation of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court concerning the crime of aggression, international experts from various disciplines such as law, history, the social sciences, psychology and economics came together to enhance the understanding of this complex and challenging matter and thereby opened a cross-disciplinary dialogue regarding aggressive war and the crime of aggression: a dialogue that not only addresses the historical genesis of the current situation, the content of the new aggression provisions, their implementation in practice and their possible regulatory effects, but also instigates perspectives for investigating future developments and issues. Stefanie Bock is Professor of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, International Criminal Law and Comparative Law in the Department of Law at the Philipps University of Marburg in Germany and Co-Director of the International Research and Documentation Centre for War Crimes Trials. Eckart Conze is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History in the Department of History at the Philipps University of Marburg in Germany and Co-Director of the International Research and Documentation Centre for War Crimes Trials.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court entered into force in 2002 and the ICC will soon be fully operational. Earlier in the ICC process, an international conference was held in Trento to address a specific issue that is still unresolved in the post-Rome negotiations: the crime of aggression. Article 5 of the ICC Statute includes aggression, yet the Statute postpones the exercise of its jurisdiction over the crime of aggression until such time as further provisions have been prepared on the definition of this crime and on the related conditions for the Court's intervention. This important volume collects the papers given by the participants at the Trento Conference. The volume is divided into three parts: the historical background of the crime of aggression; the definition of the crime of aggression, in light of proposals in the Preparatory Commission; and various points of view on the relationship between the Court's competence in adjudicating cases of alleged crimes of aggression and the Security Council's competence.

This guide to the crime of aggression provisions under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) offers an exhaustive and sophisticated legal analysis of the crime's definition, as well as the jurisdictional provisions governing the ICC's exercise of jurisdiction over the crime. A range of practical issues likely to arise in prosecutions of the crime of aggression before the ICC are canvassed, as is the issue of the domestic prosecution of the crime. It also offers an insight into the geopolitical significance of the crime of aggression and the activation of the ICC's ability to exercise its jurisdiction over the crime. The author's intimate involvement in the crime's negotiations, combined with extensive scholarly reflection on the criminalisation of inter-State uses of armed force, makes this highly relevant to all academics and practitioners interested in the crime of aggression.

With a foreword by professor Christine Van den Wyngaert, Judge at the International Criminal Court. --Book Jacket.

What happens when the international community simultaneously pursues peace and justice in response to ongoing conflicts? What are the effects of interventions by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the wars in which the institution intervenes? Is holding perpetrators of mass atrocities accountable a help or hindrance to conflict resolution? This book offers an in-depth examination of the effects of interventions by the ICC on peace, justice and conflict processes. The 'peace versus justice' debate, wherein it is argued that the ICC has either positive or negative effects on 'peace', has spawned in response to the Court's propensity to intervene in conflicts as they still rage. This book is a response to, and a critical engagement with, this debate. Building on theoretical and analytical insights from the fields of conflict and peace studies, conflict resolution, and negotiation theory, the book develops a novel analytical framework to study the Court's effects on peace, justice, and conflict processes. This framework is applied to two cases: Libya and northern Uganda. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the core of the book examines the empirical effects of the ICC on each case. The book also examines why the ICC has the effects that it does, delineating the relationship between the interests of states that refer situations to the Court and the ICC's institutional interests, arguing that the negotiation of these interests determines which side of a conflict the ICC targets and thus its effects on peace, justice, and conflict processes. While the effects of the ICC's interventions are ultimately and inevitably mixed, the book makes a unique contribution to the empirical record on ICC interventions and presents a novel and sophisticated means of studying, analyzing, and understanding the effects of the Court's interventions in Libya, northern Uganda - and beyond.