The Crime Of Conspiracy In International Criminal Law

This book looks at the relevance of conspiracy in international criminal law. It establishes that conspiracy was introduced into international criminal law for purposes of prevention and to combat the collective nature of participation in commission of international crimes. Its use as a tool of accountability has, however, been affected by conflicting conceptual perceptions of conspiracy from common law and civil law countries. This conflict is displayed in the decisions on conspiracy by the international criminal tribunals, and finally culminates into the exclusion of punishment of conspiracy in the Rome Statute. It is questionable whether this latest development on the law of conspiracy was a prudent decision. While the function of conspiracy as a mode of liability is satisfactorily covered by the modes of participation in the Rome Statute, its function as a purely inchoate crime used to punish incomplete crimes is missing. This book creates a case for inclusion in the Rome Statute, punishment of conspiracies involving international crimes that do not extend beyond the conceptual stage, to reinforce the Statute’s purpose of prevention. The conspiracy concept proposed is one that reflects the characteristics acceptable under both common law and civil law systems.

This book provides a refined definition of co-perpetration responsibility that could be uniformly applied in both the ad hoc- and the treaty-based (ICC Rome Statue) model of international criminal justice.

This study is the second in the four-part series entitled “Rethinking the Essentials of International Criminal Law and Transitional Justice”. While the first volume, The Concept of Universal Crimes in International Law, explored the parameters and theories related to crimes under international law, this book examines the notion of punishable participation in such crimes. It presents a general theory of personal criminal liability and provides a comprehensive overview of all forms of criminal participation in international law. The authors examine numerous primary materials in international and transnational criminal law, both historical and current, relating to both international and domestic jurisprudence. They also review academic literature that attempts to explain and bring consistency to the jurisprudence, as well as other sources such as reports of the International Law Commission. This rich empirical tapestry is then used to test and further develop an overarching conceptual theory and matrix that provides a better understanding of the boundaries of personal criminal liability lex lata and lex ferenda and of the relationship between the various forms of punishable participation in universal crimes. Like the first volume, this book makes a valuable contribution to a more coherent and practical understanding of international criminal law.

"Casebook on international and transnational criminal law"--

1.1 Opening Remarks and Objectives Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law 2 be enforced. This is, perhaps, the most renowned citation from the judgment of the Int- national Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (“IMT”). In the six decades which have passed since the IMT judgment was handed down, the recognition of the c- cept of individual criminal responsibility for core international crimes has been significantly reinforced and developed, particularly since the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (“ICTY”) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (“ICTR”) in the 1990’s and most recently the International Criminal Court (“ICC”). The media has, of course, played a crucial role in increasing awareness of this concept, especially amongst the general populace. Indeed, the concept has, arguably, a much higher profile today, than ever before in its history. However, the concept of individual criminal responsibility for core inter- tional crimes is neither as straightforward nor as single-facetted, as might appear on first glance. While the general principle behind the concept does not generate too many difficulties, it is in its practical application that the more challenging aspects of the concept are brought to the fore. Each of these ‘challenging - pects’ can also be described as a ‘pertinent issue’ of the concept of individual criminal responsibility for core international crimes.

Principles of International Criminal Law is one of the leading textbooks in the field. This third edition builds on the highly-successful work of the previous editions, setting out the general principles governing international crimes as well as the fundamentals of both substantive and procedural international criminal law.