International Criminal Law: Over-studied and Underachieving?

n his recent review of Neil Boister's book, An Introduction to Transnational Criminal Law, Robert Currie praises the author for shedding light on a field of law that has suffered from inattention. Transnational criminal law (TCL), the ‘other’ branch of what was traditionally called international criminal law, has been overshadowed by international criminal law ‘proper’ (ICL). The establishment of international criminal tribunals after the end of the Cold War, culminating in the establishment of the ‘flagship’ court, the International Criminal Court (ICC), came with a spectacular rise of ICL as a separate legal discipline. As a result, ICL stole the limelight at the expense of TCL. Currie deplores this since TCL presents features and issues that are worthy and in pressing need of in-depth study. Also, in his view the attention to ICL is unjustified: ICL ‘as an academic and legal inquiry or study has become distended by over-study’. While he supports the mission of international criminal justice in general, Currie points out that ICL as an academic discipline is saturated; each article, paragraph and subparagraph of the ICC Statute has been pulled apart and dissected

International Crimes before Dutch Courts: Recent Development

In the early 1990s, two former members of the Afghan secret service applied for a residence permit in the Netherlands. Their request was denied on the basis of the exclusion clause of Article 1F(a) of the Vienna Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. There were serious reasons for suspecting that the men had committed war crimes during the Afghan civil war of 1979–92. In 2000, the immigration authorities transmitted the files of the two men to the public prosecution office, which initiated prosecutions in 2003. At the trial, defence counsel raised various preliminary challenges. They argued that the case should be declared inadmissible since relying on the immigration files would violate the nemo tenetur principle and the right against self-incrimination enshrined in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Furthermore, the court had no universal jurisdiction over violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions since there was no international rule mandating a right to universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed in non-international armed conflicts. The Hague District Court dismissed the defence challenges and eventually convicted the Afghan nationals to 9 and 12 years' imprisonment. The Hague Appeal Court endorsed most of the findings of the District Court and confirmed the convictions and sentences. The reasoning underlying the decisions, both at first instance and at appeal, raise questions particularly with regard to universal jurisdiction. In this article the defence arguments are explored and the reasoning of the courts is analysed. © 2007, Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law. All rights reserved

Joint Criminal Confusion: Exploring the merits and demerits of joint enterprise liability

In February 2016, the UK Supreme Court fundamentally changed the criminal law principles of accessorial liability when it handed down its decision in R v Jogee. The Court abolished the head of liability known as 'joint criminal enterprise' (JCE) and replaced it with the ordinary principles of aiding and abetting, which it re-stated for this purpose. JCE features prominently in international criminal law (ICL) where it has an equally contentious status. The full implications of Jogee remain at present uncertain, underexplored and divisive. In this chapter, I evaluate the merits and demerits of joint enterprise by comparing JCE in English law and ICL. A cross-jurisdictional analysis of joint enterprise reveals more deeply the role the notion plays in the overall taxonomy of criminal responsibility. There are different concepts of joint enterprise with different theoretical groundings. By not recognising this, past debates of joint enterprise liability have failed to appreciate the concept’s merits alongside complicity liability