Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acronyms
- Building the International Criminal Court
- Introduction
- 1 River of Justice
- 2 Learning from the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals
- 3 The Statute – Justice versus Sovereignty
- 4 Building the Court
- 5 NGOs – Advocates, Assets, Critics, and Goads
- 6 ICC–State Relations
- 7 The First Situations
- 8 Conclusions: The Politics of the International Criminal Court
- Web Sites for Further and Ongoing Information
- Bibliography and Sources
- Index
8 - Conclusions: The Politics of the International Criminal Court
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acronyms
- Building the International Criminal Court
- Introduction
- 1 River of Justice
- 2 Learning from the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals
- 3 The Statute – Justice versus Sovereignty
- 4 Building the Court
- 5 NGOs – Advocates, Assets, Critics, and Goads
- 6 ICC–State Relations
- 7 The First Situations
- 8 Conclusions: The Politics of the International Criminal Court
- Web Sites for Further and Ongoing Information
- Bibliography and Sources
- Index
Summary
Flowing from sources traceable back at least to the Old Testament and classical Greece, the river of justice traversed a norms cascade at the Rome Statute Conference in 1998. States accepted the Nuremberg principles that individuals are culpable for international crimes, that an individual is responsible whether or not domestic law criminalizes the international crime, that superiors are responsible for the acts of subordinates and subordinates are not relieved of responsibility due to superior orders, and that suspects have rights to fair trials. States granted that genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes are international crimes worthy of prosecution. They inscribed both retributive and restorative justice objectives into the Statute. Victims gained status as subjects, not mere objects, of justice. Gender crimes were recognized as among humanity's most heinous acts.
Debate over international crimes and individuals' potential culpability for them is over. International criminal law is a set of ideas whose time has come, and the International Criminal Court is the organizational manifestation of this consensus. Just because the norms command considerable agreement, however, does not mean that agreement exists over how to implement them, or that they are simple to put into operation. The ICC's mandate and structure as outlined in the Statute are fundamental to the organization, representing its cognitive architecture. Its operational characteristics combine that architecture with the practical limitations of a real organization.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Building the International Criminal Court , pp. 248 - 260Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008