A Concise History of International Criminal Law Chapter 1 of Understanding International Criminal Law

Santa Clara University School of Law
Legal Studies Research Papers Series

Working Paper No. 07-42, September 2007
(Revised 9/12/08)
A Concise History of International Criminal Law: Chapter 1

of Understanding International Criminal Law
Beth Van Schaack
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University School of Law
Ron Slye
Professor of Law
Seattle University School of Law
This paper can be downloaded without charge from the
Social Science Research Electronic Paper Collection:
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Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1016152
A Concise History
of International
Criminal Law
I NTRODUCTION : T HE G ENESIS S TORY
The international criminal proceedings following World War II
are credited with launching the modern regime of international
criminal law (ICL). Antecedents, however, trace back for centuries and across the globe. In particular ICL draws on four
main strands of international law history: nineteenth-century
prohibitions against piracy, the subsequent regulations of slavery and the slave trade, the once theological and later secular
theory of just war, and international humanitarian law (IHL) or
the law of war. On this foundation, the international community gradually built the norms, rules, instruments, and institutions that now make up the modern ICL machinery. This
chapter interweaves the history of substantive norms with that
of evolving principles of domestic and international jurisdiction, as these narratives are virtually inseparable in ICL.
Several features of this evolution are worth pointing out at
the outset. First, with the exception of the postWorld War II
period, when the international community created tribunals
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A Concise History of International Criminal Law
and the law they were to apply virtually simultaneously, many

ICL norms developed well before there were judicial
institutions available to enforce them. In the terminology of
Dan-Cohn, ICL had conduct rules without corresponding
enforcement rules (rules directing officials to enforce the conduct rules).1 As is the case with much public international law,
it took some time before the international community was willing to put principle into practice. Second, until very recently,
the design of much of the system was ad hoc and reactive to
world events rather than the result of any sort of coherent
forward-looking process. A notable exception is the permanent
International Criminal Court (ICC), which has only prospective jurisdiction. Third, the history of ICL is marked by greater
and greater incursions into arenas that were historically the
exclusive province of sovereign states. Thus, ICL norms
increasingly govern the treatment a state can legally accord
its citizens and others under its jurisdiction, and such acts
are increasingly the subject of international scrutiny, condemnation, and criminal prosecutions.
S UBSTANTIVE L AW A NTECEDENTS
TO M ODERN ICL
Just War: Jus Ad Bellum
Although early Christian theology manifested an extreme pacifism that prohibited participation in war, by the time of
St. Augustine (C.E. 354-430) a theory of just war had developed,
which stated that resort to war was permitted only if the ends
were just. Other religious and national traditions also preserved
the right to engage in war against infidels or to avenge a wrong.
Efforts to identify the necessary conditions for war constitute
the jus (or ius) ad bellum the set of rules regulating the
decision to use military or armed force in international relations.
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Substantive Law Antecedents to Modern ICL
In his Summa Theologica, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas

(C.E. 1225-1274) set forth the following requirements for a
war to be considered just: (1) it must be authorized by a legitimate sovereign; (2) it must be necessary for the achievement of
a just cause; and (3) it must be for a right intention, that is the
restoration of a good and just order and not in furtherance of
injustice.2 Self-defense against an unjust act of aggression, punishment of an unjust act of aggression, or recovery of something
wrongly taken all qualified as just causes for Aquinas.
By the sixteenth century, however, it became accepted that
there may be a just war on both sides, and the laws of war
gradually shifted attention away from identifying the acceptable reasons for going to war to regulating the effects of war
the jus (or ius) in bello. Eventually, the notion of just war dissipated almost entirely. By the time of World War I, war was
viewed as the prerogative of the sovereign and a valid instrument of foreign policy. International law had thus dramatically
shifted focus. It went from evaluating the morality and justice
of going to war, but only weakly regulating the means and
methods of warfare, to a resignation that the justness of war
was too difficult to universalize combined with renewed efforts
to humanize the means and methods of warfare. This shift in
emphasis from jus ad bellum to jus in bello still largely describes
the state of the law of armed conflict today, although the halting development of the crimes of terrorism and aggression harkens back to the jus ad bellum tradition.
Penal Antecedents: Piracy and Slavery

Piracy and the practices of slavery and the slave trade were two
of the earliest international crimes outside of war that states
coordinated among themselves to criminalize and prosecute.
Up until this point ICL primarily focused on acts committed by
one state against the nationals of another state the traditional
paradigm for war crimes. With the recognition of piracy and
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slavery as international crimes, ICL turned its attention to

private actors that operated within the interstitial space separating nation states. We thus see a shift from a focus solely on
activity that is international, in the sense of activity between
distinct nation states, to an acceptance of international jurisdiction over activity that affects the efficient operation of the
international system (piracy) or that implicates universal moral
values (slavery).
Piracy widespread in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries was a crime that, in the absence of any international tribunal and because it was committed on the high
seas, could long be prosecuted before the courts of any nation
able to apprehend the perpetrators. The prohibition against
piracy thus gave rise to the notion of universal jurisdiction,
now a central feature of modern ICL.
Collective efforts to combat piracy in many respects began
with the 1856 Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law,
which abolished forms of piracy in armed conflict and was
signed by nearly all the imperial powers. As the international
community convened the League of Nations, there was talk of
regulating piracy more generally through international agreement; however, this effort was abandoned as delegates thought
it insufficiently pressing to merit international attention and
got bogged down in distinctions between definitions of piracy
under international and municipal law. It was not until the first
Law of the Sea Convention was drafted in 1958 that an
omnibus treaty-based definition emerged. Article 15 of the
Geneva Convention of the High Seas defines piracy as
(1) Any illegal acts of violence, detention or any act of
depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the
passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:
(a) On the high seas, against another ship or aircraft,
or against persons or property on board such ship or
aircraft;
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(b) Against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a

place outside the jurisdiction of any State;
(2) Any act of voluntary participation in the operation of
a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a
pirate ship or aircraft;
(3) Any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an
act described in sub-paragraph 1 or sub-paragraph 2 of this
article.3
This definition appears, with stylistic changes, in Article 101 of
the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention.4 The
once customary practice of universal jurisdiction over piracy
finds expression in the 1982 Convention at Article 105: On
the high seas, or in any other place outside the jurisdiction of
any State, every State may seize a pirate ship . . . and arrest the
persons and seize the property on board . . . [and] may decide
upon the penalties to be imposed.
The abolition of slavery and the slave trade is another
important chapter in the story of ICL and international
human rights. Abolitionists working across the globe were
responsible for gaining the passage of domestic laws outlawing
slavery and the slave trade and convincing nation states to
enter into multilateral treaties doing the same. Great Britain
led the charge, entering into a network of bilateral and multilateral treaties that both permitted the searching of ships suspected of transporting individuals to be sold into slavery and
established mixed tribunals in ports around the world to condemn slave ships. As early as the 1815 Congress of Vienna,
signatories called for the voluntary abolition of the slave trade,
which it described as repugnant to the principles of humanity
and universal morality.
The 1890 General Act for the Repression of the African
Slave Trade (the Brussels Act) finally called on all signatories to criminalize slave trading and to prosecute offenders
an early example of the concept of treaty-based universal
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jurisdiction.* States also established an international monitoring commission, the Temporary Slavery Commission
(1924-1925), which expanded its own mandate to consider
analogous practices of forced labor, debt slavery, and sexual
slavery. This was followed a year later by the relatively
anodyne Slavery Convention of 1926, which called for the
progressive suppression of slavery, but contained no concrete enforcement regime. The subsequent Supplementary
Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade,
and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956)
returned to the regime of the Brussels Act and required
domestic criminalization and prosecution. In particular,
Article 6(1) provided that:
The act of enslaving another person or of inducing another
person to give himself or a person dependent upon him into
slavery, or of attempting these acts, or being accessory
thereto, or being a party to a conspiracy to accomplish any
such acts, shall be a criminal offence under the laws of the
States Parties to this Convention and persons convicted
thereof shall be liable to punishment.
This legal response to slavery and related acts finds expression

in more modern international treaties prohibiting forced
labor such as the 1932 Convention Concerning Forced or
Compulsory Labour and the trafficking of persons, such as
the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons Especially Women and Children (2000), which supplements the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000).
* The Acts effects were not all beneficial or beneficent; part of its enforcement regime involved establishing colonial administrations in the African interior, putting an anti-slavery guise on the colonial occupation and exploitation of
Africa. Suzanne Miers, Slavery and the Slave Trade as International Issues 18901939, 19(2) Slavery and Abolition 19 (1998).
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International Humanitarian Law

Modern international criminal law also borrows heavily from
IHL. IHL, also called the law of war or the law of armed
conflict, describes those international rules governing armed
conflict. As long as groups of people, and later states, have
waged war, there have been rules in place governing acceptable behavior in armed conflict. Although the history of the
law of war is often told from the perspective of international
conferences held in The Hague and Geneva, as described in
more detail later, all human cultures manifest efforts to regulate this seemingly inherent aspect of our shared humanity.
Recorded history confirms that the ancient Israelites, Greeks,
and Romans, for example, distinguished between combatants
and civilians and made only the former the lawful object of
attack. There are African and Islamic traditions dictating that
captured combatants and civilians should be humanely treated. Likewise, in ancient combat, certain weapons or tactics
were prohibited if they caused excessive damage. The codes of
chivalry developed in Medieval Europe set forth rules of combat that applied within the knighthood. In 1139, for example,
the Second Lateran Council condemned the use of the crossbow, foreshadowing subsequent efforts to ban the use of
weapons viewed as unnecessarily cruel or inhumane. Many
of these ancient principles and rules are now contained in a
web of bilateral and multilateral treaties, making IHL the
most codified area of ICL. A rich body of customary
international law supplements this extensive treaty regime
to this day.
From the perspective of the development of positive law,
IHL rules historically evolved along parallel tracks. The set of
treaties emerging from international conferences in The
Hague and elsewhere concerned the means and methods of
warfare and sought to limit the tactics of war and prohibit the
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use of certain weapons designed to cause excessive suffering

(Hague Law). Treaties sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva established protections for individuals uniquely impacted by war, especially
those who do not or who no longer participate directly in
hostilities, such as the shipwrecked, prisoners of war
(POWs), and civilians and noncombatants (Geneva Law).
In addition, whereas the laws of war originally and almost
exclusively addressed international armed conflicts, with
notable exceptions such as the 1863 Lieber Code governing
the U.S. Civil War, IHL rules increasingly apply to noninternational armed conflicts. Over time, these various strands of
IHL have converged to create a more complete corpus of law.
Article 8 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court
reflects this gradual merging of Hague and Geneva Law and
of the law applicable in international and noninternational
armed conflicts.
The first multilateral IHL treaty in the strict sense was the
1856 Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law, referenced
earlier in connection with the history of piracy, which
addressed privateering and the neutrality of commercial
ships in times of war, among other topics. It was followed
by the First Geneva Convention of 1864. This treaty was
the brainchild of Henry Dunant, an inadvertent witness to
the Battle of Solferino between Austria and the kingdom of
Sardinia prior to the Italian unification. After seeing thousands of soldiers lying wounded and dying on the battlefield,
Dunant organized Italian citizens to provide care. He later
wrote a highly influential book, Un Souvenir de Solferino
(A Memory of Solferino), in which he advocated the creation
of a neutral organization to care for the wounded in war. He
also convinced the Swiss government to convene a diplomatic
conference of states to draft rules to prevent the suffering he
had witnessed. The conference led to the signing of the first
Geneva Convention by several European and American states.
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Aside from creating the ICRC,* the treaty established rules

governing the duty to provide relief to the wounded without
distinction of nationality, confirmed the neutrality of medical
units, and designated the red cross symbol as a protected
insignia.
By the turn of the century, the international community
increasingly turned its attention to codifying the laws of war.
Peace conferences were held in The Hague in 1899 and 1907
that led to the conclusion of multiple conventions addressing
land and maritime war. (Ironically, preparations for a third
conference were interrupted by World War I.) The 1899
Hague Conventions, signed but never ratified, addressed
themselves to the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes
(Hague I), the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague II),
Maritime Warfare (Hague III), the Launching of Projectiles
and Explosives from Balloons (Hague IV, 1), Asphyxiating
Gases (Hague IV, 2), and Expanding Bullets (Hague IV, 3).
Delegates reconvened in The Hague in 1906 to draft additional
treaties, which have superseded their predecessors and
expanded consideration to the Opening of Hostilities (Hague
III), the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in
Case of War on Land (Hague V), the Status of Enemy Merchant
Ships at the Outbreak of Hostilities (Hague VI), the Laying
of Submarine Automatic Contact Mines (Hague VIII),
Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War (Hague IX),
and the Discharge of Projectiles and Explosives from Balloons
(Hague XIV).
The most important treaty to emerge from this latter Conference was undoubtedly the fourth, Respecting the Laws and
* The ICRC is a nongovernmental organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, that operates as a neutral, impartial, and independent organization to protect victims of armed conflict. In this capacity, the ICRC monitors compliance
with the Geneva Conventions by warring parties, organizes care for those
wounded on the battlefield, supervises the treatment of POWs, traces those
missing in armed conflict, and mediates between warring parties.
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Customs of War on Land,5 which contained a detailed set of

regulations in its annex. The fundamental principle of jus in bello
is found in Article 22, which states that [t]he right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited. The
regulations go on to forbid poisoned weapons; the killing or
wounding of those belligerents who are hors de combat (i.e.,
those who have laid down their weapons and no longer present
a threat); means of warfare calculated to cause unnecessary
suffering; the destruction or seizure of enemy property unless
imperatively demanded by the necessities of war; and the
attack of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings.
The Hague Conventions also introduced the so-called Martens Clause, named after the Russian delegate to the first
Hague Conferences. The Clause appears in the preamble of
the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, in a modified form
in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and Protocol II, and in the
main text of Protocol I of 1977 of the Geneva Conventions. In
its inaugural formulation, it provided that:
Until a more complete code of the laws of war is issued, the
High Contracting Parties think it right to declare that in cases
not included in the Regulations adopted by them, populations
and belligerents remain under the protection and empire of
the principles of international law, as they result from
the usages established between civilized nations, from the
laws of humanity and the requirements of the public
conscience.
Martens introduced the declaration after delegates at the

Peace Conference failed to agree on the status of civilians
who took up arms against an occupying force. Large military
powers argued that they should be treated as francs-tireurs a
term first used to describe irregular military formations that
had taken up arms against the Germans during the FrancoPrussian War (1870-1871) and from then on used to refer
more generally to guerrilla fighters. Conversely, smaller states
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contended that these irregular fighters should be treated as

privileged combatants. Although the clause was originally formulated to resolve this particular dispute, it has subsequently
reappeared in various but similar forms in later treaties regulating armed conflicts.
The clause, although somewhat abstruse, contains several
important ideas. First, it highlights the legal and moral bases of
humanitarian obligations by making reference to natural law
ideas, such as the sentiments of humanity. Second, by making
reference to the practices of civilized states, the clause
directly incorporates customary law principles as a source of
rules to fill in gaps in codified law. Third, although framed from
the perspective of potential victims of violations (populations
and belligerents), it also suggests a role for courts acting in an
enforcement capacity to refer to principles of international law
and morality in assigning responsibility for abuses.
Although the Fourth Hague Convention retains modern
currency, todays rules of IHL are largely founded on the
four Geneva Conventions of 1949, drafted on the heels of
World War II and supplemented by their two 1977 Protocols.*
The 1949 Conventions were developed to provide specific protections to four classes of individuals not actively involved in
combat: the wounded and the sick in the field (Geneva Convention I), wounded and sick at sea (Geneva Convention II),
prisoners of war (Geneva Convention III), and civilians or noncombatants (Geneva Convention IV). The four Geneva Conventions primarily apply to international armed conflicts,
although common Article 3 as a convention in miniature
applies to conflicts not of an international character. The
four Conventions criminalize so-called grave breaches,
which in Geneva Convention III include willful killing, torture
* In 2005, a third Protocol recognized the red crystal as a fourth protected
symbol alongside the red cross, the red crescent, and the lion and sun, and put to
rest a long-standing dispute between the ICRC and the State of Israel, which had
long advocated a nonsectarian symbol.
17
or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health,
depriving a POW of the rights of fair and regular trial, and the
taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation
of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out
unlawfully and wantonly. It is notable that these provisions
protect core due process rights alongside the physical and
mental integrity of persons affected by armed conflict.
The international community adopted two Protocols to the
Geneva Conventions in 1977 in response to the changing
nature of armed conflict. Protocol I provides a detailed set of
rules concerning the obligation to discriminate between
military and civilian targets, defines international conflicts as
including armed conflicts in which people are fighting against
colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist
regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination,
expands the category of privileged combatants to include
some members of guerrilla movements, and further defines
and clarifies the rules with respect to mercenaries. Protocol
II elaborates on the minimum rules in common Article 3 governing noninternational armed conflicts.
E FFORTS TO E NFORCE I NTERNATIONAL

C RIMINAL L AW
Pre-World War I: Antecedents
The original customary and conventional law of war implicated
only state responsibility. In the event of a breach, responsible
states were liable to pay reparations or provide other civil remedies to aggrieved nations. Only later did states begin to impose
individual criminal liability on breaches of the law of war.
Although many point to the trial of Peter von Hagenbach in
1474 in Austria for war crimes as the first prosecution of an
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Efforts to Enforce International Criminal Law
individual for war crimes, the earliest recorded trial of an

individual for war crimes appears to be the prosecution by
an English court in 1305 of Scottish national hero and warrior
Sir William Wallace. Sir Wallace was charged with, convicted
of, and executed gruesomely for waging a war against the
English sparing neither age nor sex, monk nor nun.6 The
first treaty mention of individual criminal liability for breaches
of IHL is found in the work of the Brussels Conference of
1874, which produced a final protocol that was signed by 15
European states but never ratified. Paragraph III stated:
The laws and customs of war not only forbid unnecessary
cruelty and acts of barbarism committed against the
enemy; they demand also, on the part of the appropriate
authorities, the immediate punishment of these persons
who are guilty of these acts, if they are not caused by an
absolute necessity.7
Jurisdictionally, most early prosecutions for violations of

the laws and customs of war were based on the territorial or
nationality principles of jurisdiction. A prominent example of
an early war crimes prosecution is the 1865 military
commission trial of Henry Wirz, a Confederate Captain
accused of mistreating and murdering Union soldiers detained
in Andersonville prison in violation of the laws and customs of
war. Wirz argued that he was unable to ensure proper conditions in the prison and was otherwise just following orders. In
pleading his case, he wrote:
I do not think that I ought to be held responsible for the
shortness of rations, for the overcrowded state of the prison
(which was in itself a prolific cause of the fearful mortality),
for the inadequate supplies of clothing, and of shelters &c.
Still I now bear the odium, and men who were prisoners here
seemed disposed to wreak their vengeance upon me for what
they have suffered, who was only the medium, or I may better
say, the tool in the hands of my superiors.8
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The military commission rejected Wirzs defense and sentenced him to death by hanging. Notwithstanding that many
wrote to President Andrew Johnson pleading Wirzs pardon or
at least the commutation of the death sentence, Wirz was
hanged on November 10, 1865. On the gallows, he reputedly
stated: I know what orders are. And I am being hanged for
obeying them.
At the turn of the twentieth century, during an insurrection
in the Philippines launched in opposition to U.S. annexation of
the territory following the Spanish-American War (1898), the
United States convened a number of military commissions to
prosecute Filipino insurgents and courts martial to prosecute
U.S. service members. These institutions adjudicated both war
crimes and common crimes that were prosecuted as a function
of the U.S. obligations as occupier to maintain public order.
Most of the 800 military commission cases involved abuses
against Filipino victims (so-called Americanistas) who had
been accused of collaborating with the American occupiers
or opposing the guerillas. These institutions confronted a
number of key issues that continue to vex the modern tribunals, such as the definition of crimes triable under the laws of
war; forms of liability for lesser participants, accomplices,
superiors, and co-conspirators; and legal defenses. The
Filipino insurrection marks one of the few times that the
U.S. Congress suspended the writ of habeas corpus.*
World War I: A False Start

The first modern world war launched the first genuine global
effort to address international crimes through the exercise of
international and domestic criminal jurisdiction. World War I
(1914-1918) which pitted the Central Powers (composed of
* Additional suspensions occurred in the South to combat the Ku Klux Klan
and in Hawaii during World War II.
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the German, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Ottoman

Empires) against the Allied and Associated Powers (Great Britain, France, Imperial Russia, later the United States, and
others) precipitated the commission of abuses against combatants, POWs, and civilians on an unprecedented scale.
German atrocities included unrestricted submarine warfare,
brutal occupations, the targeting of civilians and undefended
towns, breaches of neutrality, and from the perspective of
the rest of Europe the initiation of the war in the first place.
The Ottoman Empire, with the Young Turks at the helm, is
accused of staging one of the first genocides of the twentieth
century in its effort to eradicate the Christian Armenian population of what is now Turkey. Under the pretext of averting an
Armenian revolutionary uprising or a treasonous alliance with
Russia during the war, the Ottoman Empire launched
wholesale deportations and massacres that amounted to a virtual extermination of the Armenian population. In all, more
than a million people were reportedly killed.
In the face of these offenses, the Allies convened a
Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War
and on Enforcement of Penalties to inquire into culpable conduct by the Central Powers during the Great War. The
Commission was also to consider the propriety and feasibility
of asserting penal jurisdiction over particular individuals
however highly placed accused of committing such
breaches. During the ensuing debates over the notion of ascribing individual criminal responsibility for crimes of war, a confluence of ideological and pragmatic objections emerged. On
the merits, naysayers led primarily by the Americans took
issue with the very premise that the principle of state sovereignty could be pierced so dramatically as to hold heads of state
and other state actors liable for the collective actions of their
sovereigns. Objectors also noted the lack of precedent for such
a project and pointed to gaping lacunae in available substantive
law. Others argued that trials could lengthen the war if the
21
threat of prosecution was hanging over the parties. As the war

ended, realists argued that trials would exacerbate instability in
the fledgling Weimar Republic and in Turkey, where new governments were struggling to consolidate their authority in the
wake of the war. Others warned that trials could create a dangerous precedent that might come back to bite the Allies in
subsequent conflicts. Even where there was support for
holding trials in theory, there was little agreement on secondary
issues of venue, rules of procedure and evidence, standards of
proof, and so on.
In 1919, the Commission presented its final report to the
Paris Peace Conference that was at the time negotiating peace
agreements with the Central Powers. This report documented
outrages of every description committed on land, at sea, and in
the air, against the laws and customs of war and of the laws of
humanity.* The report concluded that such crimes should be
prosecuted before an international high tribunal composed of
representatives of the Allied and Associated Powers or before
national tribunals. Foreshadowing the notion of crimes against
the peace later developed at Nuremberg and Tokyo, the
Commission also considered not strictly war crimes, but
acts which provoked the war, such as deliberate violations
of the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg. Notwithstanding early support for prosecuting German officials for
initiating the war, the Commission concluded that acts of
aggression should not be the subject of prosecution in light
of the lack of legal authority for such a charge and the complexity of undertaking an investigation into the politically
charged question of the causes of the war. It reasoned:
The premeditation of a war of aggression, dissimulated under
a peaceful pretence, then suddenly declared under false
* This latter reference to the laws of humanity planted one of the first
seeds of the idea that there were crimes against humanity that were punishable
separate and apart from conventional war crimes.
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pretexts, is conduct which the public conscience reproves

and which history will condemn but by reason of the purely
optional character of the institutions at The Hague for the
maintenance of peace . . . a war of aggression may not be
considered as an act directly contrary to positive law, or
one which can be successfully brought before a tribunal.9
The Commission, however, recommended that in the future

penal sanctions should be provided for such grave outrages
against the elementary principles of international law.10
The United States at Annex II advanced four fundamental
reservations to the reports recommendations. First, it objected
to the proposal of creating an international criminal tribunal
for which, it argued, there was no precedent, precept,
practice, or procedure instead of coordinating existing
national military tribunals. Second, it invoked the limitations
of jurisdiction when it argued that nations could not legally
take part in the prosecution of crimes committed against the
subjects of other nations. Third, it rejected the notion that any
court of law could prosecute violations of the laws or principles of humanity, on the ground that such violations were
moral rather than legal breaches and were, as such, nonjusticiable. Fourth, it argued that to prosecute a head of state outside
of his national jurisdiction would violate basic precepts and
privileges of sovereignty. The Americans indicated their intention not to participate in any international trial and instead
focused their energies on President Wilsons project for the
League of Nations.
From this point, the potential liability of German and
Ottoman defendants proceeded along separate tracks. The
1919 Treaty of Versailles ending the war with Germany
required Germany to accept full responsibility for causing
the war (the so-called war guilt clause), make substantial
territorial concessions, and pay reparations. Most important
for our purposes, Article 227 envisioned the establishment
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of an international tribunal composed of representatives of the

United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan to try the
former German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was thus
singled out for his central role in orchestrating German crimes
during the war. In agreeing to this provision, the United States
capitulated on its prior position in favor of domestic trials. The
envisioned tribunal was to prosecute the Kaiser for a supreme
offense against international morality and the sanctity of
treaties and was to be guided by the highest motives of
international policy, with a view to vindicating the solemn
obligations of international undertakings and the validity of
international morality.11 According to Article 228 of the
Treaty of Versailles, lesser German defendants were to be
tried before the domestic military tribunals of the Allied and
Associated Powers. This same provision obligated Germany to
hand over all persons accused of having committed an act in
violation of the laws and customs of war, who are specified
either by name or by the rank, office or employment which they
held under the German authorities. Mixed military tribunals
were to prosecute individuals guilty of criminal acts against
the nationals of more than one of the Allied and Associated
Powers pursuant to Article 229. By these terms, the Treaty of
Versailles became the first peace treaty to contemplate war
crimes trials.
By the time the Versailles Treaty entered into force, six
months after the signing of the 1918 general armistice, the
Kaiser had fled to the Netherlands, which had remained
neutral during the war. The Netherlands refused to extradite
him for trial, invoking a long history of providing asylum to
political refugees and the double criminality rule, which prevented the Kaisers extradition to face justice for acts that were
not crimes under Dutch law. An American attempt to kidnap
the Kaiser was thwarted, and he died in 1941. Article 227 thus
remained a dead letter. The Allies never enforced the other
penal provisions of the Treaty either. In the face of continued
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Allied equivocation over war crimes trials and fierce objections

among the German public to the possible extradition of
German nationals, Germany artfully proposed hosting
domestic trials before the German Supreme Court in Leipzig.
The Allies, desperate to salvage some vestige of the project,
agreed. To the extent that cases were brought (out of more than
800 individuals accused of war crimes, including high-level
German officials, only 12 proceedings were held), trials proceeded sluggishly against low-level defendants and resulted in
acquittals or disproportionately low sentences. Although the
Allies protested and then quit the proceedings, they never
made good on their threats to further sanction Germany,
and no additional cases were pursued.
With respect to the Ottoman Empire, the new Turkish
regime under pressure from the British and perhaps in an
effort to head off international trials of its own former leaders
court-martialed in Constantinople an impressive array of once
prominent officials for crimes against humanity and civilization and other wartime offenses. Some defendants were tried
in absentia because Germany refused to extradite them. The
trials provoked a surge of Nationalist backlash, prompting the
Turkish government to release a number of important defendants, ostensibly on the ground that there was no case against
them. The British took many of these individuals into custody
on Malta and elsewhere to prevent their release. As the Turkish
civil war heated up, however, the British eventually swapped or
released its prisoners, who had been languishing in pretrial
detention.
The first treaty of peace with Turkey, the 1920 Treaty of
Se`vres, contained accountability provisions mirroring those in
the Treaty of Versailles with respect to the right of the Allies to
convene military tribunals to prosecute persons guilty of having
committed acts in violation of the laws and customs of war.
Article 230 also contemplated a tribunal created by the League
of Nations to address the massacres committed during the
25
continuance of the state of war on territory which formed part

of the Turkish Empire on August 1, 1914. After the Turkish
War of Independence, Mustafa Kemal (a.k.a. Ataturk), who
led the Nationalists to victory in the civil war, denounced and
refused to ratify the Treaty of Se`vres. Renegotiations produced
a successor treaty, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which was
silent on the question of international justice or legal accountability for abuses. To this day, Turkey has never acknowledged
responsibility for the campaign against the Armenians and protests diplomatically whenever it is mentioned.
The World War I experiment with international criminal
justice thus proved short-lived, a fiasco even, according to
Henry Morgenthau, Sr., ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
from 1913 to 1916. The fragile unity and resolve among the
Allies dissipated in the immediate postwar period. Evolving
events overtook idealism. In the end, only a handful of individuals were tried, and those who were prosecuted were essentially exonerated. This failed history was ever present a mere
two decades later as a world war once again ravaged the globe.
The Interwar Period: Efforts to Avert

Another World War
The end of a great war frequently brings a revision of the laws
of war in its wake.12 World War I was no different. In the
tenuous peace during the short interwar period, the
international community came together to build institutions
to diffuse and settle international disputes and to fill some
of the legal lacunae that had become so apparent in the
postWorld War I period. Institutionally, the League of
Nations which featured as its judicial branch the precursor
to the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of
International Justice (PCIJ) announced its goal of providing
a global forum for safeguard[ing] the peace of nations by
resolving international disputes without recourse to war. In
26
1920, an advisory commission convened in connection with

the League of Nations recommended the creation of a
permanent international criminal court to have jurisdiction
over crimes constituting a breach of international public
order or against the universal law of nations. The proposal,
however, was rejected as premature, and only the PCIJ was
created with civil jurisdiction over states.
In response to the new weapons systems deployed during
World War I, treaties were drafted regulating or prohibiting the
use of various means and methods of war, such as bacteriological agents, poison gas, and submarines, and protecting vulnerable classes of persons, such as POWs and the wounded and
sick. The catastrophic war also revived aspects of the just war
theory as reflected in the optimistic, if not naive, KelloggBriand Pact (or Pact of Paris). The Pact, originally a bilateral
treaty between the United States and France that was later
opened to global ratification, pledged its members to
condemn recourse to war for the solution of international
controversies, and renounce it as an instrument of national
policy in their relations with one another . . . [and] agree that
the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of
whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which
may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific
means.13
Almost immediately after it entered into force, however, the

Pact became a nullity, as Japan invaded Manchuria (1931),
Italy invaded Ethiopia (1935), and Germany invaded Poland
(1939), effectively launching World War II.
World War II: A Return to First Principles

The postWorld War II period is nothing less than a watershed
moment in the development of ICL. This period heralded the
development of two international tribunals for adjudicating
27
international crimes the International Military Tribunal

for the Trial of German Major War Criminals (the IMT or
Nuremberg Tribunal) and the International Military Tribunal
for the Far East (the IMTFE or Tokyo Tribunal). The Allies
established these tribunals to prosecute, respectively, highlevel German and Japanese military and civilian authorities
whose crimes had no particular geographic localisation.14
The Nuremberg Tribunal was established by agreement (the
London Agreement of August 8, 1945) among the four victorious Allied Powers: France, the Soviet Union, the United
Kingdom, and the United States. By contrast, the Tokyo
Tribunal was technically established by a special proclamation
issued by the Supreme Allied Commander of the Far East,
U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, although with the acquiescence of the other Allied Powers. International judicial proceedings before these institutions were followed by hundreds
of trials before military and civilian tribunals in the various
zones of occupation throughout Europe and the Pacific theatre. As these enforcement efforts were underway, the codification of ICL also began in earnest, with the promulgation of
treaties addressing genocide (the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) and war
crimes (the four Geneva Conventions of 1949).
That the Allies would adopt a strategy of international
criminal justice in the postWorld War II period was not a
foregone conclusion. For one, the memory of the abject failure
of the last effort at international justice following World War I
remained fresh. The British and Soviets were more inclined to
purge, punish, and in some cases simply execute defeated
principals without elaborate legal processes. (The devastated
French played little role in the initial decision making.) Even
Prime Minister Churchill argued in favor of executions for
Nazi leaders and summary legal proceedings for the rank
and file. In the end, it was pressure from the United States
and in particular from the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson
28
that resulted in the adoption of strictly legal processes to

adjudge German and Japanese officials accused of violations
of international law.
This dramatic change in the U.S. position toward international justice provides one of the most fascinating chapters
of the history of ICL. As you will recall, after World War I, the
United States was the staunchest opponent of the creation of
an international tribunal, considering such an institution to be
unprecedented and potentially dangerous. The United States
also rejected both the justiciability of crimes against humanity
as separate and apart from more traditional war crimes and the
notion of a crime of initiating and waging an aggressive war. By
the end of World War II, however, the United States had
become the champion of trials, domestic and international
(even single-handedly establishing the Tokyo Tribunal by
executive fiat). The United States also directed the prosecution
of crimes against the peace and conspiracy charges.
How can we explain the volte-face of the United States?
Much may have turned on a key protagonist in this story
Stimson, a lawyer by training. Stimson never wavered in his
advocacy that the Nazi defendants should face trials rather
than firing squads, a countermajoritarian position when U.S.
public opinion at the time strongly favored summary execution
or immediate imprisonment. Stimson remained staunchly
opposed to alternative proposals that hundreds if not thousands of Nazis be summarily shot, insisting that even the
Nazi defendants deserved due process of law in keeping
with the best of the American legalistic tradition. Stimson
was able to pass the baton to Justice Robert H. Jackson, a
Supreme Court Justice (the last one without a law degree)
who represented the United States at the Paris Peace Conference and eventually was chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg.
Once the Allies arrived at the Paris Peace Conference, the
American delegation imposed its postwar strategy on the rest
of the Allies, and the Nuremberg Tribunal was established.
29
The Tribunal convened November 20, 1945 to October 1,

1946. The Tokyo Tribunal (sitting from May 3, 1946 to
November 12, 1948) followed closely on its heels.
The subject matter jurisdiction of the two tribunals reflects
the ideas being cast about in the postWorld War I period.
Notwithstanding the original Allies reticence about criminalizing the resort to war, the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters at
Articles 6(a) and 5(a), respectively, enabled the prosecution for
crimes against the peace, defined as the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in
violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances.
Prosecutable war crimes, uncontroversially defined in subsection (b), included murder, ill-treatment or deportation to
slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in
occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or
persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or
private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages,
or devastation not justified by military necessity. The Charter
heralded the revival of the concept of crimes against humanity,
although little reference was made in the judgment to the
crimes World War I ancestry. The crime was defined as
murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other
inhumane acts committed against any civilian population,
before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial
or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any
crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in
violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
Twenty-four Nazi leaders were indicted before the IMT,
which was composed of judges from the four Allies. One
defendant was too ill to go to trial (Krupp);* one committed
* IMT prosecutors attempted to substitute his son Alfried (who ran his
familys armaments company during the war) as a defendant, but the judges
ruled the substitution came too close to trial. Alfried was later tried in subsequent
proceedings for his use of slave labor. As a result of U.S. intervention during the
30
suicide (Ley); and one was tried and convicted to death in

absentia (Bormann). The Tribunal tried the other 21 defendants.15 Three of those were acquitted (Schacht, von Papen,
and Fritzsche); seven were sentenced to prison terms ranging
from ten years to life (Hess, Funk, Doenitz, Raeder, von Schirach, Speer, and von Neurath). The other 11 were sentenced
to death (Goering, von Rivventrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner,
Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Saukel, Jodl, and SeyssInquart). These defendants were all hung except Goering,
who committed suicide hours before he was scheduled to be
executed. It has been suggested that he accomplished this with
the help of a young American guard who, perhaps unwittingly,
smuggled a cyanide pill into Goerings cell.
At the time of Japans surrender, the Japanese Cabinet
launched war crimes trials of Japanese defendants, perhaps
thinking that the principle of double jeopardy would prevent
subsequent trials by the Allies. Eight accused were tried
according to this plan, but all were subsequently retried by
the Tokyo Tribunal. The defendants at Tokyo were four former
premiers (Hiranuma, Hirota, Koiso, and Tojo), three former
foreign ministers (Matsuoka, Shigemitsu, and Togo), four former
war ministers (Araki, Hata, Itagaki, and Minami), two former
navy ministers (Nagano and Shimada), six former generals
(Doihara, Kimura, Matsui, Muto, Sato, and Umezu), two
former ambassadors (Oshima and Shiratori), three former economic and financial leaders (Hoshino, Kaya, and Suzuki), one
imperial adviser (Kido), one theorist (Okawa), one admiral
(Oka), and one colonel (Hashimoto).
The United States, through General MacArthur, exercised
far more control and influence over the Tokyo trials than at
Nuremberg. Whereas the prosecutions at Nuremberg were led
by a multinational team that shared relatively equal power and
Cold War, Krupp was eventually released from prison and his property was
restored to him.
31
responsibility, the Tokyo prosecution was led by a single Chief

of Counsel from the United States chosen by MacArthur with
Associate Counsel from the Allies. The Tribunal itself was
composed of judges from newly independent states in addition
to representatives of the Allies. All of the decisions of the Tokyo
Tribunal were subject to review by MacArthur, although he
never exercised this power; there was no provision for review of
any of the Nuremberg decisions. In addition, each of the
accused at Tokyo had an American defense counsel in addition
to one or more Japanese defense counsel. The majority opinion, authored by Judge Webb of Australia, resulted in the sentencing of seven defendants to death by hanging, 16 to life
imprisonment, one to 20 years imprisonment, and one to
seven years imprisonment.16 Interestingly, Emperor Hirohito
was not indicted or called as a witness by the Tokyo Tribunal,
notwithstanding that he was viewed by many as the architect of
Japanese imperialism. There is speculation that members of
the U.S. government thought the occupation would proceed
more smoothly with the emperor in place, albeit with a renunciation of any claims to divinity. By the 1950s, most of the
Tokyo defendants sentenced to terms of imprisonment had
been paroled. Two defendants returned to high government
positions in Japan.
Notwithstanding the importance of the work of the Nuremberg
and Tokyo Tribunals, the vast majority of postWorld War II
prosecutions did not occur before these two international tribunals, but were conducted by the victorious powers in their
respective zones of occupation. For example, Allied Control
Council Law No. 10, which largely mirrored the terms of
the Nuremberg Charter, authorized trials in Germany. The
United States hosted 12 key trials, each with a theme and
appropriate nickname. The Hostages Trial, for example,
involved allegations against German generals leading troops
during the Balkans Campaign who were charged with civilian
hostage-taking and murder. The RuSHA Trial targeted
32
14 officials of various SS organizations responsible for the

implementation of the Nazi pure race program through racial
cleansing and resettlement. Defendants included principals
from the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (RuSHA) bureau,
the office of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening
of Germanism, the Repatriation Office for Ethnic Germans,
and the Lebensborn society. The Einsatzgruppen Trial
involved mobile death squads operating primarily behind the
frontline in Eastern Europe that indiscriminately targeted
Jews, partisans, Roma, disabled persons, and otherwise uncooperative civilians. The Doctors Trial involved medical doctors
accused of engaging in human experimentation, and the
Justice Case involved German jurists and lawyers held responsible for implementing the Nazi racial purity program envisioned by the eugenic laws. The Ministries Trial involved
officials of various Reich ministries, who faced charges for
atrocities committed both in Germany and in occupied countries
during the war. The High Command Trial focused on highranking generals and former members of the High Command
of Nazi Germanys military forces charged with having participated in, planning, or facilitating the execution of the war.
Trials proceeded against civilian industrialists as well. For
example, the Flick Trial centered on Friedrich Flick and five
other high-ranking directors of Flicks group of companies and
involved charges of the use of slave labor and plundering.
(Flick himself was sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
After serving three years, he was released and went on to
rebuild his industrial empire. His son was later named one
of the richest men in Austria.) The IG Farben Trial concerned
the manufacture of Zyklon B, the poison gas used in extermination camps (the other supplier of the gas was the firm Tesch/
Stabenow). IG Farben was also charged with participating in
crimes against the peace, because it had developed processes
for synthesizing gasoline and rubber from coal and thereby
contributed to Germanys ability to wage war without access
33
to petroleum resources. Twelve former directors of the Krupp

Group were accused of having enabled the armament of the
German military forces and for having used slave laborers. In
total, more than 5,000 trials were held of German and Japanese
POWs accused of committing war crimes and crimes against
humanity.
It is difficult to overstate the significance of the postWorld
War II period to the field of ICL. Together, these legal proceedings established many core principles of the field, and
modern tribunals continue to cite these proceedings as persuasive authority. We touch here on the most salient of the
tribunals contributions. First, the Nuremberg and Tokyo proceedings established that many violations of IHL that had
theretofore given rise only to state responsibility also gave
rise to individual criminal responsibility, even if the relevant
treaty was silent as to criminal penalties. Therefore, when the
Nuremberg defendants argued that they could not legally be
prosecuted for certain acts because they were not technically
crimes under international law at the time the acts were committed, the Tribunal responded that [c]rimes against
international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such
crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.17
All of the postWorld War II ICL treaties are premised on this
notion of individual criminal responsibility for breaches. In
particular, it is the cornerstone of the enforcement regime
contained in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which
with 194 parties recently became the first treaties to enjoy
universal ratification. Each state in the world has now agreed
to apprehend and prosecute, or extradite for prosecution, any
individual found to have committed a grave breach of one of
the four Conventions.
Second, the two tribunals established the primacy of international law over domestic law. In many cases, the conduct
for which the accused had been charged was authorized by
34
domestic law. Indeed, the tribunals Statutes made clear that

crimes against humanity in particular were punishable
whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country
where perpetrated. That international law placed limits on the
content of domestic law governing purely domestic affairs was
groundbreaking under the prevailing view that international law primarily governed relations between states. The
Nuremberg and Tokyo proceedings mark the first time that
the international community pierced the veil of sovereignty
to hold governmental actors responsible for the mistreatment
of their compatriots.
Third, two new crimes officially came into existence with
the promulgation of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters:
crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity. The
Allies prosecutorial strategy focused primarily on the crimes
against the peace charge, which the Allies considered the
primary justification for punishing individual representatives
of the Axis Powers. Jackson, in his opening statement, spoke of
aggressive war not genocide as the greatest menace of
our times. Indeed, the crimes against humanity allegations
appear in parts of the Nuremberg Judgment as mere afterthoughts. Nonetheless, the crimes against humanity charge
was revolutionary in piercing the veil of sovereignty and establishing once and for all that international law applied to crimes
committed by state actors against their compatriots. The inclusion of both crimes in the Charter was controversial in light of
the principle of legality, defined in international law through
the maxim nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poena sine lege, which
dictates that an individual cannot be prosecuted for conduct
that was not criminalized at the time the individual acted. This
was a primary defense of all the defendants, yet it had no effect
on the tribunals. The Nuremberg Tribunal in particular ruled
that the defense was inapplicable in light of the obvious wrongfulness of the acts in question. Where the treaties were silent
as to the criminality of the prohibited acts therein, the Tribunal
35
found precedent for their prosecution before national tribunals. Accordingly, it argued that the customary international
law prohibition of the acts went beyond the conventional one.
As discussed in a fuller chapter on the nullum crimen defense,
these arguments are repeated in modern ICL jurisprudence
when judges are faced with new atrocities that do not fit nicely
into the framework of existing crimes.
Fourth, although their legacy remains plagued by charges
of victors justice, the tribunals established clear precedent
for the exercise of international penal jurisdiction as distinct
from domestic jurisdiction. Indeed, in many respects, this
precedent gave rise to a distinct preference for international
and multilateral, as opposed to national and unilateral, efforts
at international criminal justice. This preference remains
compelling today in light of concerns about the potential
for abuse and politicization inherent in the practice of universal jurisdiction. Depending on the political will of the
international community, international courts can assert a
more robust jurisdiction, freed from the limitations that international law and the principle of international comity might
place on their domestic counterparts. International tribunals
are also able to tap into the existing UN enforcement machinery, such as the Security Council. Notwithstanding this firm
foundation for the exercise of international jurisdiction, the
international community did not significantly build on this
precedent until the postCold War period. The mending of
entrenched Cold War rivalries created space for the United
Nations to revive the promises of the postWorld War II era
in the face of civil wars in the former Yugoslavia and Sierra
Leone, crimes against humanity and genocide in Rwanda and
Cambodia, the destruction of East Timor by forces loyal to its
former occupier Indonesia, and acts of terrorism in Lebanon.
In particular, the Security Council, once paralyzed by East
West obstructionism, could act unanimously without the
threat of an automatic veto of one of the permanent five
36
members. These modern international and hybrid tribunals

have the blessing of the entire United Nations, either as
organs of the Security Council (the Yugoslav and Rwandan
tribunals), as the products of treaty negotiations between the
state in question and the UN Secretary General (the Special
Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the
Courts of Cambodia, and the Lebanon tribunal), or as a
feature of a UN transitional authority (the East Timor Special
Panels).
Fifth, the postwar tribunals confirmed that even highranking state officials could be held individually criminally
liable for international crimes committed in war. In particular,
the IMT proclaimed that the very essence of the [Nuremberg]
Charter is that individuals have international duties which
transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by
the individual State.18 High-ranking state agents thus cannot
hide behind state sovereignty when international jurisdiction is
at issue. In so holding, the tribunals rejected common law
doctrines of head of state and sovereign immunity that might
have shielded particular defendants from liability, a result that
has been followed by the modern international tribunals in
cases involving Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, Liberian President Charles Taylor, and Sudanese President Omar
al-Bashir. On the flip side of head of state immunity, the post
World War II Tribunals also rejected the claim that individuals
implementing superior orders should be exonerated: That a
soldier is ordered to kill or torture in violation of the
international law of war has never been recognized as a defense
to such acts of brutality, though . . . the order may be urged in
mitigation of the punishment.19
Sixth, the tribunals convicted civilians and military men as
well as private actors financiers and industrialists for war
crimes and crimes against humanity. State action is not an
element of these crimes, although in many situations of mass
violence and repression the state is the source of or inspiration
37
for the abuses. Together, this collection of rulings became

known as the Nuremberg principles and they have shaped
the field of ICL ever since.
PostWorld War II: The Cold War Freeze

The postWorld War II period heralded a wave of optimism
about the power of law and judicial institutions to restrain state
violence and protect the vulnerable. Just as the ink was drying
on the UN Charter and the tribunals judgments against the
major World War II defendants, the Cold War set in, paralyzing efforts to put permanent ICL institutions in place. As a
result, for many years, the development of ICL was largely
relegated to obscure UN drafting committees, a smattering
of domestic proceedings in transitional societies, and the writings of a few dogged academics.
This stagnation did not set in immediately, however. Continuing the typical reactivity of international law, the close of
World War II brought about a flurry of drafting endeavors. The
international community constructed the United Nations from
the ashes of the League of Nations. The lynchpin of its Charter
is Article 2(4), which codified a default rule against the use of
force subject to two express exceptions actions undertaken
with Security Council approval (Article 42) and measures
taken in self-defense (Article 51). It remains an open question
whether the historic doctrine of humanitarian intervention survived the passage of the Charter. The Charter forbids the use of
force undertaken against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any state. The legality of the use of force
to stop atrocities or to otherwise assist people in need is thus
an open question, especially in light of the proliferation of
human rights treaties.
The immediate postwar era also witnessed the promulgation of the 1948 Genocide Convention20 and four new Geneva
Conventions in 1949 protecting various classes of people in
38
times of war the wounded, the shipwrecked, POWs, and

civilians.21 These treaties confirmed the new expectation of
individual criminal responsibility for international law breaches.
The Geneva Conventions, in particular, codified the war
crimes recognized at Nuremberg and Tokyo and other proceedings officially deeming them grave breaches. The treaties
also made such breaches subject to universal criminal jurisdiction, distinguishing them from those breaches that give rise
only to state (civil) responsibility. These treaties were followed
by other multilateral treaties prohibiting or criminalizing acts of
torture, the policy of apartheid, various manifestations of terrorism, war crimes in noninternational armed conflicts, and the
international sale and distribution of narcotics. Many of
these subsequent treaties contain boilerplate language
obliging signatories to either prosecute offenders or extradite them elsewhere for prosecution, regardless of the place
of the acts commission or the nationality of the perpetrator
or victim (the aut dedere aut judicare requirement). This
drafting process remains seemingly without end, as
international law struggles to keep pace with increasingly
destructive and cruel methods of warfare and repression.
One of the more recent additions to this pantheon is the
2005 Convention on Disappearances.22
In addition to this norm proliferation, members of the
international community also tried to build a permanent judicial institution, untainted by the stain of victors justice, to
prosecute international crimes. It was assumed that this work
would proceed in parallel with the drafting of substantive law.
Indeed, the drafters of the Genocide Convention contemplated the establishment of a permanent international criminal
court at Article VI, which provides that individuals charged
with committing genocide shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have
jurisdiction. Thus, in 1947, the General Assembly requested
39
the International Law Commission (ILC)* to study the desirability and possibility of establishing an international judicial
organ for the trial of persons charged with genocide or other
crimes. The ILC was also asked to codify the Nuremberg and
Tokyo principles in a Draft Code of Offenses Against the Peace
and Security of Mankind that would provide the subject matter
jurisdiction of the proposed tribunal.
On other fronts, the international community began the
process of building a regime of international human rights
that in many respects is the progeny of the crimes against
humanity charge at Nuremberg. The groundbreaking Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was followed by twin Covenants
in 1966 that reflecting the ideological schisms of the day
protect civil and political rights on one side23 and economic,
social, and cultural rights on the other.24 Subsequent
specialized treaties seek to protect and guarantee equal treatment for racial and ethnic groups, women, children, indigenous
people, and the disabled. Over time, states increasingly consented to more robust enforcement regimes in these treaties,
granting expert committees the powers to receive reports,
monitor human rights practices, accept individual complaints
and petitions, recommend reforms and reparations, conduct
site visits, and so on. This proliferation of partially overlapping
institutions domestic, regional, and international bodies
with varying degrees of adjudicative power has generated a
productive cross-fertilization of norms that is approaching
a veritable common law of ICL and international human
rights law.
* The General Assembly established the ILC that year to promote the
progressive development and codification of (primarily) public international
law. The ILC is composed of legal experts and played a key role in creating a
draft code of international crimes and a draft statute for a permanent
international criminal court that served as the starting point for creating the
modern ICC.
40
With the advent of the Cold War, however, work on many

of these fronts slowed or stalled. In particular, the project to
create a permanent international criminal court hit an impasse,
in part because delegates could not agree on a definition of the
crime of aggression against the backdrop of United States and
Soviet proxy wars throughout the developing world. As a
result, prior to the establishment in the mid-1990s of the ad
hoc criminal tribunals, ICL was characterized by a panoply of
articulated rights without judicial institutions in which to
launch prosecutions a rightsremedy gap that characterizes
much of public international law.
Notwithstanding the lack of international prosecutions,
there was some domestic activity in the form of paradigmatic
cases. The most high profile of these is probably the trial
of Adolf Eichmann, whose job under the Third Reich was
to manage mass deportations from Eastern Europe to brutal
ghettos and extermination camps. Following Germanys
surrender after World War II, U.S. troops detained Eichmann
briefly in an internment camp, although he escaped because
he was not recognized. On a false Red Cross passport
obtained through the Nazi underground, Eichmann traveled
to Argentina where he lived under an assumed name until
1960. That year, Israeli Mossad agents abducted him, causing
a major diplomatic rift between Israel and Argentina that went
before the UN Security Council. The Council condemned the
kidnapping, and ordered Israel to make appropriate restitution. In Israel, Eichmann was charged with crimes against
humanity, war crimes, and crimes against the Jewish people
under Israels 1950 Nazi and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law. His primary defense was jurisdictional, arguing
that the Israeli courts could not prosecute him under ex post
facto legislation for acts that he allegedly committed before
the State of Israel existed. The Israeli court ruled that it had
both universal and passive personality jurisdiction over him.25
Eichmann did not contest the factual charges against him, but
41
claimed he was just following orders. He was convicted and

hanged in 1962.
In 1987, France prosecuted Klaus Barbie the former
head of the Gestapo in Lyon, dubbed the Butcher of Lyon
for crimes against humanity committed in connection with his
involvement in the deportation of French Jews and partisans
during World War II.26 He had already been prosecuted in
absentia for war crimes, but these verdicts lapsed while he was
in exile in Bolivia. The crimes against humanity case went
forward on the basis of a ruling that the crime carried no statute
of limitation. During this trial, he was represented by Jacques
Verges, who has subsequently made a name for himself (the
Devils Advocate) representing high-profile accused war criminals and Holocaust deniers. Verges an avid anticolonialist
invoked a modified tu quoque (you also) defense by analogizing
Barbies actions to those of France in Algeria during that countrys
quest for independence. Barbie ultimately died in prison after
serving four years of a life sentence.
In the United States, civil suits involving ICL and human
rights norms have proceeded under the Alien Tort Statute and
related statutes. For example, civil plaintiffs have obtained
personal jurisdiction over defendants hailing from the former
Yugoslavia, Rwanda, East Timor, the states of the Southern
Cone and Central America, the Philippines, and elsewhere.
In addition, corporations can also be sued for violating these
norms in places where they do business. Although serving
important purposes, these tort cases which occasionally proceed in default often seem to be a poor substitute for more
robust criminal processes and penalties that better reflect the
severity of the offenses involved.
PostCold War Period: A Renaissance

In the late 1980s, a consortium of Latin American and
Caribbean states reinvigorated the project of international
42
criminal justice, primarily because they sought an international

mechanism to combat the transnational illicit drug trade. With
prompting from the General Assembly, the ILC again turned
its attention to drafting a statute for a permanent international
criminal court. The ILC completed a draft statute in 1994 that
formed the basis for intensified consideration by an Ad Hoc
Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal
Court and then a Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court.
In the meantime, it appeared that genocide had returned to
Europe in the form of deportations, concentration camps,
ethnic cleansing, and mass killings of Bosnian Muslim civilians during the war on the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
(To be fair, violations were committed by all three of the immediate parties to the conflict Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and
Serbs as well as by the former Yugoslavia and recently
independent Croatia, which had territorial designs in Bosnia).
In the midst of the war, the UN Security Council addressed
the conflict in seriatim resolutions. In Resolution 780 adopted
on October 6, 1992, the Security Council directed the Secretary General, at the time the Egyptian diplomat Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, to establish a Commission of Experts to document violations of international law. As this investigation was
ongoing, governments (prominently the United States), and
intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations called
for the creation of an ad hoc international tribunal in the
Nuremberg tradition to assign individual responsibility for
the documented abuses. The interim report of the Commission
of Experts echoed these recommendations. In Resolution 808
adopted February 22, 1993, the Security Council unanimously
decided that an international tribunal shall be established for
the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of
international humanitarian law committed in the territory of
the former Yugoslavia since 1991. It directed the Secretary
General to prepare specific proposals for such a tribunal. In his
43
subsequent report, Boutros-Ghali presented a tribunal

blueprint and appended a draft statute setting forth existing
international humanitarian and criminal law. Invoking its
Chapter VII powers, the Security Council unanimously adopted
the draft statute in Resolution 827 on May 25, 1993. The
International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) was
thus established.
The next year, Rwanda became engulfed in a genocide of
colossal proportions. All told, upward of 800,000 Tutsi and
moderate Hutu individuals perished within the span of a
mere four months a rate of killing that far exceeded that
in the Nazi Holocaust. Having convened a tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia, the Security Council could not readily
ignore almost a million dead in Rwanda, especially given
that the international community had largely stood silent
and immobile as the death toll mounted. The Security Council
through Resolution 955 thus established the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), finding that widespread violations of international law largely within the confines of a single state, although with regional ramifications,
constituted a threat to international peace and security within
the meaning of Chapter VII of the UN Charter. As first constructed by the Security Council, the ad hoc tribunals shared
an Appeals Chamber and a Chief Prosecutor. South African
jurist Richard Goldstone originally held the latter post.
Canadian jurist Louise Arbour, who was later chosen to be
the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, next occupied
the position. The Security Council then appointed Swiss Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. From the tribunals beginning, observers expressed concern that the Rwandan prosecutions were
not getting the Chief Prosecutors full attention. As the Security Council began to contemplate the completion of the tribunals missions, it split the Office of the Prosecutor into two
positions over the objections of Del Ponte. The chief Prosecutor of the ICTR is now Hassan Bubacar Jallow, a former
44
Solicitor General, Attorney General, Minister of Justice, and

Supreme Court Justice of Gambia. In 2007, Del Ponte retired
and was replaced by Belgian jurist Serge Brammertz, who was
also the chief UN investigator into the death of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Later, additional ad hoc
tribunals were established by efforts from outside the Security
Council to respond to massive crimes committed in Sierra
Leone, Cambodia, and East Timor.
The relative success and startup costs of the two ad hoc
tribunals served as further inspiration for the drafting of a
standing international criminal court. After convening six separate sessions, the Preparatory Committee produced a consolidated draft Statute that served as the basis for comprehensive
negotiations at a Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries
on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court held
from June 15 to July 17, 1998 in Rome, Italy. A final statute
called the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
(ICC Statute or Rome Statute) was completed and adopted
at the Diplomatic Conference, which was attended by delegations
from 120 states, multiple observers and intergovernmental organizations, and hundreds of nongovernmental organizations.
Only seven states voted against the statute: the United States,
China, Israel, Qatar, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen. The ICC entered
into force in 2002 with the deposit of the 60th instrument of
ratification.
The ICC has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against
humanity, and genocide as defined by its Statute. Although the
crimes against the peace charge was the lynchpin of the
Nuremberg Indictment and Trial, the crime of aggression
has eluded modern definition. Drafters of the ICC Statute
were unable to come up with a consensus definition of aggression in time for the treaty to be opened for signature, so they
punted. Article 5(2) promises that [t]he Court shall exercise
jurisdiction over the crime of aggression once a provision is
adopted defining the crime and setting out the conditions
45
under which the Court shall exercise jurisdiction with respect

to this crime. Such a provision shall be consistent with the
relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.
A Working Group continues to seek resolution on issues
such as (1) the proper role of the Security Council, the General
Assembly, and the International Court of Justice in adjudications of the crime of aggression; and (2) whether the definition
should make reference to specific acts that constitute aggression, or be left open for future interpretation by the Court. As
of this writing, a Review Conference is to be held by the ICC in
2009-2010 to consider adopting a definition of aggression.
Events from 1994 onward attest that the Nuremberg and
Tokyo Tribunals are not mere historical footnotes. Indeed, the
modern era promises more than a revival of the Nuremberg
legacy. In fact, the international community has built on the
promises of that era in significant ways. Key events are the
1998 establishment of a permanent International Criminal
Court in The Hague; the 1998 arrest of General Augusto
Pinochet of Chile in the United Kingdom in response to an
arrest warrant from Spain for him to stand trial for torture,
genocide, and other international crimes over which Spain
asserts universal jurisdiction; and the 1999 indictment of President Slobodan Milosevic, the first against a sitting head of
state. Progress toward a more comprehensive system of
international justice has not been linear or continuous. Rather,
it has featured a number of oversteps and backslides that
include the failure of international troops and domestic officials to arrest key indicted war criminals from the Yugoslav war;
the in absentia indictment in Belgium of high-level political
figures from powerful states, which resulted in an international
backlash and a contrite amendment of Belgiums universal
jurisdiction law; the failure of the East Timor Special Panels
to gain jurisdiction over any defendants of real consequence as
a result of Indonesian obstructionism and international
neglect; the summary execution of Saddam Hussein after a
46
controversial trial and while important charges remained

pending against him; and all the delays, wasted resources,
and corrupt functionaries that seem to plague international
bureaucracies, no matter how noble their mandate. Most
important, perhaps, the tragic events of September 11,
2001, led to the creation of legal black holes at Guantanamo
and elsewhere where pure power for a time had all but eclipsed
law. Yet, the fields movement is inexorably forward, and
international criminal law and justice are undoubtedly here
to stay.
47

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Santa Clara University School of Law

Legal Studies Research Papers Series

A Concise History of International Criminal Law: Chapter 1

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1016152

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1016152

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

and the law they were to apply virtually simultaneously, many

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1016152

Substantive Law Antecedents to Modern ICL

In his Summa Theologica, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas

Penal Antecedents: Piracy and Slavery

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

slavery as international crimes, ICL turned its attention to

Substantive Law Antecedents to Modern ICL

(b) Against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

This legal response to slavery and related acts finds expression

Substantive Law Antecedents to Modern ICL

International Humanitarian Law

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

use of certain weapons designed to cause excessive suffering

Substantive Law Antecedents to Modern ICL

Aside from creating the ICRC,* the treaty established rules

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

Customs of War on Land,5 which contained a detailed set of

Martens introduced the declaration after delegates at the

Substantive Law Antecedents to Modern ICL

contended that these irregular fighters should be treated as

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

E FFORTS TO E NFORCE I NTERNATIONAL

Efforts to Enforce International Criminal Law

individual for war crimes, the earliest recorded trial of an

Jurisdictionally, most early prosecutions for violations of

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

World War I: A False Start

Efforts to Enforce International Criminal Law

the German, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Ottoman

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

threat of prosecution was hanging over the parties. As the war

Efforts to Enforce International Criminal Law

pretexts, is conduct which the public conscience reproves

The Commission, however, recommended that in the future

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

of an international tribunal composed of representatives of the

Efforts to Enforce International Criminal Law

Allied equivocation over war crimes trials and fierce objections

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

continuance of the state of war on territory which formed part

The Interwar Period: Efforts to Avert

Efforts to Enforce International Criminal Law

1920, an advisory commission convened in connection with

Almost immediately after it entered into force, however, the

World War II: A Return to First Principles

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

international crimes the International Military Tribunal

Efforts to Enforce International Criminal Law

that resulted in the adoption of strictly legal processes to

A Concise History of International Criminal Law

The Tribunal convened November 20, 1945 to October 1,

Efforts to Enforce International Criminal Law