The discipline of international criminal law

• Pages: 1-4
• Author: Beth Van Schaack,Ronald C. Slye

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Part I

THE DISCIPLINE OF

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW

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A. Introduction

This part addresses fundamental questions concerning

international criminal law as a distinct discipline of public

international law. It begins by tackling the question of what areas of

law the field of international criminal law encompasses. This

preliminary definitional discussion is followed in Chapter 1 by a

concise history of this body of law, with reference to key precedents,

treaties and other legal instruments, institutions, and historical

moments. Chapter 2 introduces the primary institutions that

adjudicate international criminal law and the way in which these

bodies mediate, accommodate, and even threaten state sovereignty—

a foundational principle of international relations. Chapter 3 focuses

on the way in which international criminal law is made, with

reference to the traditional sources of public international law.

Chapter 4 discusses the justifications for treating certain violent

conduct as an international (vice purely domestic) crime—in other

words, why a particular assault should allow for extraterritorial

cases to be brought at both the international and domestic levels.

Finally, Chapter 5 considers the way in which modern tribunals have

addressed situations in which the extant international criminal law

is incomplete, vague, or indeterminate while remaining faithful to

the principle of legality and without running afoul of the ex post facto

prohibition. These chapters should enable you to better evaluate the

relative authoritativeness of the various sources of law being cited by

parties and tribunals as they resolve contested doctrinal issues in the

cases you read.

B. What Is International Criminal Law?

Academics and practitioners often do not agree on the full

contours of the field of international criminal law (ICL) as a distinct

discipline. Part of this definitional disagreement stems from the fact

that ICL is a relatively new area of law. Although ICL has a few long

taproots (as discussed in the chapter on the history of ICL), the field

really came to fruition in the post-World War II period when two

major bodies of law converged. Modern ICL sits at the intersection of

public international law—which historically regulated the behavior

of states when they acted on the world scene—and domestic criminal