The story of the movement to establish the International Criminal Court, its tumultuous first decade, and the challenges it will continue to face in the future.

Some parts of this publication are open access, available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. Chapters 2, 4, 10, 47 and 49 are offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The International Criminal Court is a controversial and important body within international law; one that is significantly growing in importance, particularly as other international criminal tribunals close down. After a decade of Court practice, this book takes stock of the activities of the International Criminal Court, identifying the key issues in need of re-thinking or potential reform. It provides a systematic and in-depth thematic account of the law and practice of the Court, including its changes context, the challenges it faces, and its overall contribution to international criminal law. The book is written by over forty leading practitioners and scholars from both inside and outside the Court. They provide an unparallelled insight into the Court as an institution, its jurisprudence, the impact of its activities, and its future development. The work addresses the ways in which the practice of the International Criminal Court has emerged, and identifies ways in which this practice could be refined or improved in future cases. The book is organised along six key themes: (i) the context of International Criminal Court investigations and prosecutions; (ii) the relationship of the Court to domestic jurisdictions; (iii) prosecutorial policy and practice; (iv) the applicable law; (v) fairness and expeditiousness of proceedings; and (vi) its impact and lessons learned. It shows the ways in which the Court has offered fresh perspectives on the theorization and conception of crimes, charges and individual criminal responsibility. It examines the procedural framework of the Court, including the functioning of different stages of proceedings. The Court's decisions have significant repercussions: on domestic law, criminal theory, and the law of other international courts and tribunals. In this context, the book assesses the extent to which specific approaches and assumptions, both positive and negative, regarding the potential impact of the Court are in need of re-thinking. This book will be essential reading for practitioners, scholars, and students of international criminal law.

This volume examines lessons learned in over two decades of ICC practice. It discusses macro issues, such as universality, selectivity, new technologies, complementarity, victims and challenges in the life cycle of cases, as well as ways to re-think the ICC regime in light of the Independent Expert Review, aggression against Ukraine, and novel global challenges.

How can defendants be tried if they cannot understand the charges being raised against them? Can a witness testify if the judges and attorneys cannot understand what the witness is saying? Can a judge decide whether to convict or acquit if she or he cannot read the documentary evidence? The very viability of international criminal prosecution and adjudication hinges on the massive amounts of translation and interpreting that are required in order to run these lengthy, complex trials, and the procedures for handling the demands facing language services. This book explores the dynamic courtroom interactions in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in which witnesses testify through an interpreter about translations, attorneys argue through an interpreter about translations and the interpreting, and judges adjudicate on the interpreted testimony and translated evidence.

This book offers the first comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the provisions of the ‘Malabo Protocol’—the amendment protocol to the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights—adopted by the African Union at its 2014 Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. The Annex to the protocol, once it has received the required number of ratifications, will create a new Section in the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights with jurisdiction over international and transnational crimes, hence an ‘African Criminal Court’. In this book, leading experts in the field of international criminal law analyze the main provisions of the Annex to the Malabo Protocol. The book provides an essential and topical source of information for scholars, practitioners and students in the field of international criminal law, and for all readers with an interest in political science and African studies. Gerhard Werle is Professor of German and Internationa l Crimina l Law, Criminal Procedure and Modern Legal History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Director of the South African-German Centre for Transnational Criminal Justice. In addition, he is an Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape and Honorary Professor at North-West University of Political Science and Law (Xi’an, China). Moritz Vormbaum received his doctoral degree in criminal law from the University of Münster (Germany) and his postdoctoral degree from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He is a Senior Researcher at Humboldt-Universität, as well as a coordinator and lecturer at the South African-German Centre for Transnational Criminal Justice.