The world’s first permanent international criminal tribunal for the prosecution and punishment of the world’s most serious crimes became a reality on 1 July 2002. On this date, after attracting ratifications from roughly two-thirds of the world’s states, theRome Statute (for the establishment) of the International Criminal Court¹ came into force, triggering the treaty’s provisions for the selection of the Court’s eighteen judges and paving the way for operations to begin in 2003. At present, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has jurisdiction over individuals accused of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes after 1 July 2002,² provided...

Slobodan Milosevic, a.k.a. the “Butcher of the Balkans.” From 1991 to 1999 his Serb troops and Bosnian Serb proxies fought four brutal Balkan wars. Hundreds of thousands died, most of them innocent civilians, and millions were displaced. Milosevic saw himself as a modern-day Abe Lincoln, employing force in a valiant effort to hold his crumbling Yugoslavia together. He now stands accused of the most serious crimes known to mankind – grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

On 12 February 2002, the former Serb leader became the first head of state ever to face trial before an...

The debate about whether state officials who commit international crimes should be held responsible in external fora is informed by the basic tension that exists between the desire to protect human rights and calls to respect state sovereignty. This debate involves the interplay between two branches of international law. On one side, there is the well-established law of state and diplomatic immunities which protect a state and its agents from the jurisdiction of other states. This law proceeds from notions of sovereign equality and is aimed at ensuring that a state does not unduly interfere with other states and their...

The ongoing debate over the legitimacy and utility of the newly formed International Criminal Court has been freighted with overblown rhetoric by its supporters and opponents alike. Proponents describe the Court as the most significant new international institution created in many years. To them, it represents revolutionary progress in the struggle to supplant the rule of the jungle with the rule of law. The Court, they claim, will be a powerful new weapon in the fight to end the prevailing “culture of impunity,” deter atrocities, promote national reconciliation in divided societies, and trigger major progress in efforts to promote the...

The Bush administration has been very vocal in its opposition to the newly created International Criminal Court (ICC).¹ This stance is significant in its own right, for American support would be of tremendous help as the Court tries to establish itself. The US decision is also of interest because it raises deeper moral issues that transcend the specific case. The attraction of the ICC, I suggest, is that it offers the prospect of a more impartial adjudication of cases involving genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.² The “victor’s justice” alternative that it is meant to replace predictably leads to...

Genocide has a collective dimension both on the act side and the harm side.¹ An individual agent cannot, except in extraordinary circumstances, perpetrate a genocide single-handedly. It usually involves a number – and in some cases, such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, an extraordinarily large number – of perpetrators. Thus, the act of perpetrating a genocide typically involves a collective agent. With respect to the harm, genocide is a harm against a group. In perpetrating a genocide, though individuals clearly are harmed as individuals, they are harmed because they are members of a group, and harmed with the intention of destroying the...

Societies haunted by the legacies of violent communal conflict and atrocity confront the perilous task of moral regeneration. I understand the project of moral regeneration to involve establishing a new order of political, legal, and social relationships that affirms certain moral truths or principles denied by previous modes and orders, and which aims at preventing a recurrence of violations of those moral truths or principles.¹ The establishment of an International Criminal Court (ICC) represents the introduction of one international approach to the project of moral regeneration in the aftermath of communal violence and war. According to Amnesty International, “the struggle...

The entry into force of the ICC Statute of the International Criminal Court on 1 July 2002¹ means that many issues which were once of purely theoretical interest will soon arise in concrete form with very real legal and political ramifications. Prominent among these issues is the sensitive and controversial question of the relationship between the ICC and national reconciliation measures, such as truth commissions.

The ICC is a vital part of the international effort to eliminate the persistent climate of impunity which has so often sheltered those who commit serious international crimes. The ICC is a permanent international judicial...

Global justice is a moral ideal. It is also the subject of ethical discourse about the organization of political, economic, and social affairs on this planet.¹ Globalization refers to a constellation of processes that effectively de-territorialize much of the political, economic, and social affairs on this planet.² These processes have, to date, encouraged and promoted an intensification of global inequalities, poverty, and economic stratification.³ The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a new institution yet one that has been sought by many states, international lawyers, and human rights activists since at least the midtwentieth century. With the adoption of the ICC...