Law Commons^™

The Conferred Jurisdiction Of The International Criminal Court, Leila Nadya Sadat

Notre Dame Law Review

After twenty years of operation, we know that the International Criminal Court (ICC) works in practice. But does it work in theory? A debate rages regarding the proper conceptualization of the Court’s jurisdiction. Some have argued that the ICC’s jurisdiction is little more than a delegation by states of a subset of their own criminal jurisdiction. They contend that when states ratify the Rome Statute, they transfer some of their own prescriptive or adjudicative criminal jurisdiction to the Court, meaning that the Court cannot do more than the state itself could have done. Moreover, they argue that these constraints are …

Opportunities And Challenges Seeking Accountability For War Crimes In Palestine Under The International Criminal Court's Complementarity Regime, Thomas Obel Hansen

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently conducting a preliminary examination of the situation in Palestine, involving allegations against Israeli authorities and military personnel as well as what the Prosecutor refers to as “Palestinian armed groups.” The preliminary examination creates a framework for advancing accountability norms in the Palestinian context and globally for international crimes committed by States with significant resources. However, the road to accountability is anything but straightforward. Indeed, several challenges relating both to the applicable legal framework and broader policy issues, could delay—or potentially even undermine—the accountability process, if not properly understood and managed. One particularly important …

What Is Aggression?: Comparing The Jus Ad Bellum And The Icc Statute, Mary Ellen O'Connell, Mirakmal Niyazmatov

Journal Articles

Under the international law on resort to force, the jus ad bellum, any serious violation of the United Nations Charter prohibition on the use of force amounts to aggression. Despite a close connection for over a century between the prohibition on aggression by states and the crime of aggression for which individuals may be held accountable, delegates to the 2010 International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda felt compelled to bifurcate the two prohibitions and reach a compromise. Today, the ICC Statute contains a detailed provision on the crime of aggression, but with a byzantine procedure for entry into …

Empowering United States Courts To Hear Crimes Within The Jurisdiction Of The International Criminal Court, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

United States courts have only incomplete and uneven jurisdiction, most acquired piecemeal and only in recent years, to prosecute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed outside our borders. Recent developments in international law and practice-especially the heightened commitment of democracies including the United States to end impunity for atrocities, and the imminent prospect of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) with worldwide jurisdiction-suggest the need to expand and rationalize the jurisdiction of U.S. courts to make it coextensive with that of the ICC.

It now appears all but certain that the ICC will come into being in the …