Defining the Crime of Agression - Book Review

• Author: Daniel C. Turack
• Position: Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
• Pages: 1225-1227

DEFINING THE CRIME OF AGGRESSION

BY OSCAR SOLERA†

LONDON, U.K.: CAMERON MAY, LTD. 2007

DANIEL C. TURACK∗

If one examines the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC),

Article 5 includes the crime of aggression, however, the court cannot

exercise jurisdiction with respect to the crime of aggression as an

acceptable definition of aggression continues to be elusive. Oscar Solera,

of Switzerland’s Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations,

believes that a “rule on aggression applicable to state responsibility issues

may or may not fully coincide with a rule on aggression for individual

criminal purposes.”1 So there are two concurrent definitional processes. In

Solera’s view, it is what states or international actors have to say. He does

examine the views on the subject of eminent scholars, and provides an

understanding of their writings and analytical approaches.

Solera’s approach is to look at the contours of a definition which

encompass all of the elements that will make a rule on aggression legally

sound. To be successful in this quest, there must be a “social

understanding” of aggression by the international community. To achieve

his objective, the core of the analysis focuses on scrutiny of the

“documentary evidence of States’ positions in the [UN] General Assembly

specialized organs, the ILC’s discussions on aggression, and the proposals

and debates that have taken place in the context of the Preparatory

Commission for the [ICC].”2

The book is organized into two parts. In Part I, the evolution of the

notion of aggression is analyzed starting with its context in the League of

Nations and culminating in the adoption of the UN General Assembly

Resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 1974, which could be said to constitute a

landmark in the process of finding a legal definition of aggression. It was

an extremely troublesome and complex process. The author is

painstakingly thorough in providing the reader with the entire picture and

Copyright © 2008, Daniel C. Turack.

† London, U.K.: Cameron May, Ltd. 2007. Pp. 529. Hardcover $170. ISBN-10

1-905017-43-X.

∗ Professor of Law, Capital University Law School.

1 OSCAR SOLERA, DEFINING THE CRIME OF AGGRESSION 11 (2007).

2 Id. at 12.