international criminal law

Introduction

      body of laws, norms, and rules governing international crimes and their repression, as well as rules addressing conflict and cooperation between national criminal-law systems. See also international law; conflict of laws.

      Criminal law prohibits and punishes behaviour judged to be antisocial. Because each country's laws are a reflection of its values, there are often large differences between the national laws of different countries, both with respect to the nature of the crimes themselves and the penalties considered appropriate. The term international criminal law refers variously to at least three distinct areas: cooperation between different national legal systems through extradition and other forms of mutual legal assistance; the prohibition and punishment of certain behaviour by several countries acting collectively or by the international community as a whole; and the operation of autonomous international legal systems, including courts and other mechanisms of enforcement, that exist alongside national criminal law.

Mutual legal assistance

      To facilitate the enforcement of their domestic criminal laws, national governments cooperate with each other in the transfer of offenders from one jurisdiction to another and in a number of other ways relating to the investigation of crimes and the gathering and production of evidence. Extradition is governed essentially by a complex web of bilateral treaties (treaty) by which states agree to the rendition of fugitives from other jurisdictions so that they can stand trial in the country where the crime took place or, in exceptional cases, where there are other jurisdictional links, such as the nationality of the offender or of the victim.

      Although bilateral extradition treaties vary somewhat, there is a body of generally applicable rules. States usually agree upon a list of serious crimes for which extradition may be authorized and upon a requirement that such crimes be recognized as criminal in both the sending and the requesting state. Extradition is permitted for a specific crime described in an extradition request. Under the rule of specialty, a requesting state may try a suspect only for the crimes for which the suspect was extradited, unless this protection is waived by the sending state. Extradition may be refused in cases where the crime is deemed to be a political offense, though there is greater willingness to grant extradition on this basis when politically motivated crimes involve violence directed against innocent targets. Political crimes involving expression and opinion are often prosecuted as sedition or treason. Beginning in the late 20th century, governments increasingly refused to extradite persons accused of capital crimes unless assured that capital punishment would not be imposed should the fugitive be convicted.

Categories of international crime

      Certain crimes are international by their nature. They may be carried out in more than one country, in which case they are considered transborder crimes, or they may be committed in international zones such as the high seas or international airspace. Efforts to repress such crimes become internationalized out of necessity, reflecting the practicalities of preventing acts that sometimes easily elude national jurisdictions. Crimes such as trafficking in persons, participating in the slave trade, and committing various terrorist offenses, such as piracy and airplane hijacking, are governed by both international treaties and customary legal obligations.

      Crimes committed by national governments—or rather by the individuals who control and direct them—are at the core of international criminal law. The victims of such crimes are sometimes the nationals of other states (e.g., civilians in an occupied territory during an armed conflict), but more often they are the criminal state's own citizens. In this context, international criminal law overlaps considerably with human rights law, the former attributing blame to individuals mainly in order to impose punishment, the latter blaming the state and seeking some form of redress or compensation.

      The first modern international criminal tribunal was held at Nürnberg (Nürnberg trials), Germany, following World War II to try military and civilian leaders of Nazi Germany. (A similar tribunal was established at Tokyo to try alleged Japanese war criminals.) The Nürnberg trials (1945–46) prosecuted three categories of offenses: crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The definitions of the crimes were narrowly crafted and applied only to acts committed in association with international war (war, law of). More than half a century later, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC; 1998) targeted the same three kinds of crime and added the crime of genocide. During the second half of the 20th century, the definitions of the crimes that were prosecuted at Nürnberg evolved considerably, so that they came to cover offenses committed in peacetime or in civil wars.

      Crimes against peace consist of acts of aggressive war. Although aggression was defined in a United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolution (1974) as “the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations,” the question of how to assign individual responsibility for acts of aggression committed by states remains unresolved. Although the ICC has jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, it cannot exercise its authority until there is agreement both on a definition of aggression suitable for individual criminal prosecutions and on the role that the UN Security Council should play in determining when aggression has taken place. Such an agreement has proved elusive, however. There have been no prosecutions for crimes against peace or for aggression since the post-World War II trials. Virtually no national jurisdictions have introduced this category of crime into domestic legal codes, in contrast to the widespread acceptance of national laws against genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Moreover, the two ad hoc criminal tribunals established by the UN Security Council for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda were given jurisdiction to punish genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes but not aggression.

      The concept of war crimes refers to a range of acts judged to be beyond civilized human behaviour, even in the extreme conditions of warfare. The acts defined as war crimes concern both the methods and the materials of warfare (e.g., the use of certain weapons that cause unnecessary suffering or the targeting of noncombatants). At Nürnberg the defendants argued that, whereas states might have culpability for violations of the laws and customs of war, individuals could not be singled out for criminal prosecution. Nevertheless, the judges held that “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 be enforced.” Although individuals can be held responsible for most kinds of international crimes, such crimes are almost never committed without the involvement of states or of rebel organizations striving to take power. At the beginning of the 21st century, the question of whether states themselves can commit international crimes remained a controversial issue.

      In 1949 a narrow list of war crimes committed during international armed conflict, known as grave breaches, was approved in four Geneva Conventions. When the Geneva Conventions were revised with additional protocols in 1977, attempts to expand the concept of grave breaches to include acts committed in non-international, or civil, war did not succeed. States have always been more willing to accept a role for international norms and standards during international, or interstate, wars than during civil wars. Nevertheless, by the mid-1990s international views had evolved, partly because of the influence of the international human rights movement and partly because of outrage at the scale of the atrocities committed in the early 1990s in the essentially civil conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. As evidence of this development in international law, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court recognized a broad range of war crimes committed during internal armed conflict.

      Although those who prepared the post-World War II prosecutions initially believed that atrocities committed against civilians within Germany fell outside the scope of international law, the Nürnberg tribunal was empowered to prosecute such acts under the rubric of crimes against humanity—a concept that previously had not existed in international law. At about the same time, the closely related concept of genocide was developed to describe acts aimed at the physical destruction, in whole or in part, of ethnic, racial, national, or religious groups. The crime of genocide was defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). Although crimes against humanity were prosecuted at Nürnberg, a widely accepted definition of this term eluded international law until the adoption of the Rome Statute in 1998. Crimes against humanity consist of a variety of acts, such as murder, torture, enforced disappearance, apartheid, and rape, committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population.

      In a general sense, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide all consist of acts, such as murder and rape, that are criminal under national law. What sets them apart as international crimes is the context in which the act is committed, be it an international or internal armed conflict (war crime), an attack on a civilian population (crime against humanity), or the intentional destruction of an ethnic, racial, national, or religious group (genocide). For a prosecution to succeed, it must be established both that the underlying criminal act occurred (e.g., the killing of individuals) and that one of these contextual elements was present.

Prosecution and defense

      When ordinary crimes cross the threshold and become international crimes, important consequences ensue. Most significantly, general legal rules on the exercise of jurisdiction no longer apply. Under international law, a national criminal-justice system may prosecute crimes committed within the state's own territory or by its nationals but not, as a general rule, crimes committed outside its borders by nonnationals. This rule, however, has been relaxed in the case of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Under what is known as universal jurisdiction, national courts may prosecute these offenses no matter where or by whom they are committed. Indeed, in the 1990s Belgium adopted controversial legislation that granted its courts the authority to try anyone—even the leaders of other countries—for such offenses. In 2001 the International Court of Justice ruled that the Belgian legislation was invalid because it wrongly assumed that Belgian courts can try foreign heads of state or other senior officials while they are still in office. Following the judgment, and under pressure from states that threatened to prohibit official travel to Belgium, the Belgian government modified the legislation. In the case of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and the crime of torture, international treaties make prosecution not only a right but a duty. Under the principle known as aut dedere aut judicare (Latin: “either adjudicate or extradite”), national governments must either try offenders or extradite them to a country that is prepared to do so. The “try or extradite” principle can also be found in treaties dealing with terrorism, counterfeiting, and the theft of nuclear materials.

      Special rules apply to the arguments an accused may raise in defense of his actions. Although a head of state may benefit from immunity under national law, he cannot invoke this defense in the case of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. He may, however, plead immunity from prosecution by other states for crimes committed while he was in office, as long as they were not committed in a private context. Nevertheless, heads of state have no such immunity before international courts or tribunals. In addition, statutory limitations (limitations, statute of), a common bar to prosecution many years after a crime has taken place in many national legal systems, are excluded by both treaty and customary law for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

      Individuals also may not argue in their defense that they were acting under the orders of a superior, though this is permitted for soldiers and officers of the peace in most national legal systems. Although subordinates cannot be exonerated in such circumstances, international criminal law focuses its attention primarily on commanders. Those with superior authority, be they military or civilian, may be found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide when they are committed by those under their command, even when there is no evidence that they actually ordered the commission of the crime.

International courts and tribunals

World Wars I and II

      In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles (Versailles, Treaty of) contemplated the establishment of an international court to prosecute German Emperor William II “for a supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.” The court was never set up, however, because William obtained asylum in a neutral country, The Netherlands. The victorious allies at the close of World War II were more successful, establishing by treaty the tribunal at Nürnberg that judged “the major war criminals of the European Axis.” In all, some 22 leading Nazis were tried by a court composed of eight judges (four judges rendered the verdicts, and four served as alternates), two each from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union.

      Critics of the Nürnberg trials, and of a similar prosecution held in Tokyo, have viewed them as “victor's justice,” particularly because the tribunals never considered war crimes committed by their own soldiers, though in at least one case, concerning submarine warfare, the argument that illegal acts had also been committed by the other side was accepted as a defense. Despite such flaws, the tribunals represented a great achievement for those who desired an international system that would prosecute heinous offenses committed during war.

Post-World War II developments

      In 1948 the UN General Assembly assigned the task of preparing a statute for an international criminal court to the International Law Commission; three years later the commission submitted a draft statute, but consideration of the proposal was postponed. The issue was revisited periodically, and in 1989 the General Assembly invited the commission to resume its efforts, which became more urgent following the atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda and the establishment of international criminal tribunals to prosecute individuals responsible for acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing in those countries. The eventual draft, as modified by subsequent General Assembly committees, was submitted to a diplomatic conference (formally the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court) held in Rome in June–July 1998. The Rome Statute, adopted at the close of the conference, was signed by nearly 140 countries. It came into force on July 1, 2002, after it had been ratified by the requisite 60 countries. Nevertheless, the failure of the United States, Russia, China, and several other major countries to join the ICC has compromised its effectiveness.

      The ICC, which is based in The Hague, is authorized to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide that are committed in the territory, or by a national, of a state that has ratified the Rome Statute. Prosecution may exceed these jurisdictional limits when authorized by the Security Council. The court recognizes the primacy of national criminal jurisdictions and, acting as a court of last resort, can proceed with a case only after it has determined that domestic courts are either unable or unwilling to prosecute.

      The ICC consists of 18 judges elected by the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute; the judges are divided into Pre-Trial, Trial, and Appeals divisions, each of which is further subdivided into chambers. Cases are initiated by a prosecutor who is elected by the Assembly of States Parties; the prosecutor may also act at the request of the UN Security Council or at the request of a government that has ratified the statute.

      The ICC depends upon national justice systems to carry out investigations and to arrest and transfer suspects. Its procedural regime is a hybrid of the common-law (common law) adversarial model and the inquisitorial approach of civil-law systems such as those of continental Europe. Following the common-law model, prosecutions at the ICC are directed by an independent prosecutor rather than by an investigating judge, as would be the practice under civil-law systems. As in civil-law systems, however, the ICC prosecutor is given special responsibilities to ensure that the rights and interests of the defendant are secured. Moreover, the ICC prosecutor is subject to close judicial scrutiny by the Pre-Trial Chamber, something that would not generally be the case in a common-law system. Those convicted by the ICC receive sentences of up to life imprisonment and serve their terms in national prisons.

William A. Schabas

Additional Reading

General introductory works on international criminal law include M. Cherif Bassiouni, International Criminal Law, 2nd ed. (1999); and Roy Gutman and David Rieff, Crimes of War (1999). Specific crimes are the subject of William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law (2000); and M. Cherif Bassiouni, Crimes Against Humanity (1999).The structure and function of international courts are discussed in Antonio Cassese et al. (eds.), International Criminal Court: A Commentary on the Rome Statute for an International Criminal Court (2001); Kai Ambos and Otto Triffterer (eds.), Commentary on the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1999); William A. Schabas, An Introduction to the International Criminal Court (2001); and Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials (1992).William A. Schabas

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