International Criminal Law

The course starts by retracing the modern bases of international humanitarian law as in The Fourth Hague Convention of 1907. Thereafter, review of the attempt to create an international tribunal at the end of World War I will allow students to contemplate the “missed” opportunities to implement the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles that explicitly sought judicial redress of wartime atrocities. The recitation of war crimes, the proposals of new international crimes and the introduction of new doctrinal approaches to international criminal law will be garnered from the 1919 Report of the War Commission.  Students will learn about the international community’s early views concerning head of state immunity, defenses of superior orders, breaches of the peace as well as the nascent contours of crimes against humanity. The Leipzig war crime prosecution of the Dover Castle case will be discussed.

Subsequently, the milestone establishment of the WWII Nuremberg and Tokyo International Military Tribunals, replete with their governing Charters, will be studied. Significant parts of the judgments of each of the International Military Tribunals will be assessed through a historical lens that observes the systemic or structural criminal nature of what were termed “the total wars” in Europe and in Asia during  the mid-20th century. Also, students will read excerpts from the subsequent military trials that were held for minor defendants in both theaters of war.

The second section of the course concentrates on the creation of modern international criminal judicial institutions. The International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute and the statutes of the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, together with that of the Special Court for Sierra Leone will be compared and contemplated. The jurisprudence of these courts and tribunals along with that of the Extraordinary Chamber of the Cambodian Court will serve to introduce students to a more detailed exposé of current issues status in international criminal law. Case law excerpts dealing with the substantive holdings on war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and an examination of the requirements of the crime of aggression will inform the discussions. The application of doctrines of individual criminal responsibility such as joint criminal enterprise and superior responsibility assist our analysis of the evolving, modern international criminal law jurisprudence.

Tutors: Prof Yvonne McDermott Rees or Prof Patti Sellers