The International Criminal Court : A Paradox Of Coherent Decision Making Processes?

Crimes against the international community are a collection of offences that are recognised by the international community as being of universal concern. However the prosecution of crimes against the international community can be controversial. Such crimes may be committed in the context of military conflict. They may be highly politically motivated, or they may have been ordered or committed by the state itself. The establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 was a significant development in the law of crimes against the international community. The independent international court established by the Rome Statute, acts as a last resort for crimes fitting into the three categories of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Due to Australia’s Dualistic system, both the War crimes Act

Brett Schaefer and Steven Groves believes the United States decision was justifiable. They argue that the International Criminal Court has a worthy purpose, but still has issues that need to be addressed before the United States would join the court. Schaefer and Groves explain the Article 98 Agreement and the American Service Member Protection Act. Also their argument contains the five concerns the Bush Administration had about joining the ICC, but the two major concerns regard the fear of political abuse of power and also the threat to national sovereignty.

This paper will identify the various major global crimes and criminal issues that affect national and international criminal justice systems and processes. In addition, there will be a comparison and contrast of the different criminal justice systems and how they have addressed major global crimes and criminal issues.

The book Rough Justice: Battle to Fix the World, One Prosecution at a Time was authored by David Bosco. Basically, the book focuses on the establishment of the international court and how years after its formation the powerful nations do not cooperate with it. Powerful nations such as the United States and Russia do not support the activities of International Criminal Court (ICC) and thus leaving its mandate to the poor African Nations. The book was chosen because it touches on one of the subjects of international law. The ICC is part of United Nations that deals with the violators of the international law: it helps to provide an enforcing mechanism for international law that has been lacking for long time.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), created in 1998 (Thayer and Ibryamova 2010), is responsible for investigating and prosecuting the most extreme cases, including crimes against humanity, aggressive crimes, war crimes, and genocide. The credibility of this institution, however, has been compromised due to the United States revocation of support and membership. Initially it is important to recognize the arguments against the United States becoming a member state of the ICC and what precipitated the U.S. withdrawing its signature from the document that instituted the Court. Once this has been established, addressing and refuting these objections will develop the arguments in favor of ICC membership. Finally, this analysis will lead to

In this essay, I shall be discussing whether the UN Security Council (hereafter referred to as the Security Council) is fit for purpose in the 21st Century. The approach I will be taking is more of a generic outlook; examining which fragments of the Security Council requires reformation.

The traditional establishment of the ad hoc tribunals formed as a permanent “Court of Arbitration”, this organ so formed was under the League of Nations which was later replaced by The International Court of Justice after the World War II [1].

The criminal justice system has for long been faced by a lot of caseloads, an issue which has been heaping a lot of pressure on the stakeholders.  The cause of increased workload is lack of adequate resources to deal with the caseload. Some people have argued that the only way to deal with the overloads is to provide more money to the criminal justice systems so that everyone involved will be able to do the required tasks and in so doing reduce the number of cases while scholars think that the only way to reduce the caseloads is by having adequate resources and procedures otherwise the stakeholders will always be overworked. In actual sense, many of the cases are not handled through trials and only a small percentage of criminals get a

To support my argument, I will first discuss the evolution of international criminal justice and the ICC. Then I will address my three subsidiary arguments. First, I will argue that the International Criminal Court is effective because it increases accountability of human rights violators. Secondly, I will argue that the existence and use of the court increases disapproval and deterrence which protects human rights making the ICC effective. Third, I will argue that the International Criminal Court is effective because it allows for a universal standard of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour as well as transcends and empowers national jurisdictions. Finally, I will address the counter argument and conclude.

The issue of justiciability has finally been laid to rest with the adoption of the Optional Protocol (OP) on the ICESCR by the United Nations General Assembly. The OP empowers the committee to handle individual and collective complaints, state-to-state complaints, and initiate inquiries for allege violations. With these arguments well settled, attention has now been shifted from judicial application to non-judicial application and accountability for ESCR – what can pretty much be referred to as the policy approach.

Second, between 1950s and 1960s, the number of delegates from the newly independent countries serving in international organizations has increased. The composition of the ICJ has also changed during the 60s. More seats are distributed to judges from the “third or fourth” world. While the ratio of judges from Asia and Africa has significantly increased between 1965 and 1970, dividing the cold war phase into two periods, into 1946-1966 and 1967-1984, would allow us to observe how the change in the Court’s composition affects the distribution of the judges’ votes, and how the pre-existing voting blocs (if there is any), answers to such

In 1998, the International Criminal Court was created through the Rome Statute. The court was made with the intention of being a justice system that had jurisdiction over international crimes such as war crimes and genocide. Originally, there were 124 states that ratified the International Criminal Court and there were 31 states that signed. Recently, states have decided to leave the International Criminal Court or retract their signatures. There are many arguments as to why these states are choosing to leave, but, specifically for African states like South Africa, people argue that the International Criminal Court is mainly prosecuting crimes committed in Africa; they believe they are spending an unfair amount of time on the crimes in

The Rome statute of the international criminal court is a treaty that establishes the courts jurisdictions and regulations. Article 21 of the International Criminal Court is the first article to describe which laws and treaties will be applicable to the courts. Since there are many states that are participating in this treaty it becomes very difficult to have very specific laws and regulations for the court since there is a variety of situations that can happen. An important statement is that any international law must be consistent with the Statute before anything, thus giving the power to the ICC statute to be the starting point of any application of laws. The court has to respect the laws within the different states before trying to intervene

When there is evidence that the wellbeing of a child would be endangered by a parent then sole or singular custody should be the preference over joint custody, also when there is proof that a parent has been abused and flees with a child that child should not be returned to the abusive parent. Over the years the U.S. has changed it procedure concerning grave risk of harm regarding Hague cases and found it not in the child’s best interest to be ordered to return to a domestic violence situation without a full investigation of the nature of the abuse and “of the likelihood that the authorities in the country to which the children are being returned will indeed fully protect them and their abused mother”. [1]

supporting countries armies, police force, national guard, etc… to capture the warrants that are handed out for the apprehension of criminals. If the increase of the $146 million dollar budget is to happen, then the funding could help support a sole police task force for the International Criminal Court, in which they do not have to rely on other countries but rather themselves. Solely having their own police task force will allow for the issue of more warrants within supporting countries due to not having to rely on their police force, but rather their own. As stated from the International Criminal Court, “As a judicial institution, the ICC does not have its own police force or enforcement body; thus, it relies on cooperation with countries worldwide for support, particularly for making arrests, transferring arrested persons to the ICC detention centre in The Hague, freezing suspects’ assets, and enforcing sentences.” As stated by the following quote, the current jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court is not vast, and