OUVRAGE : W.A. Schabas, Y. McDermott, N. Hayes (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to International Criminal Law: Critical Perspectives

Kadidiatou HAMA

International criminal law is at a crucial point in its history and development, and the time is right for practitioners, academics and students to take stock of the lessons learnt from the past fifteen years, as the international community moves towards an increasingly uni-polar international criminal legal order, with the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the helm. This unique research companion takes a critical approach to a wide variety of theoretical, practical, legal and policy issues surrounding and underpinning the operation of international criminal law as applied by international criminal tribunals.

The book is divided into four main parts. The first part analyses international crimes and modes of liability, with a view to identifying areas which have been inconsistently or misguidedly interpreted, overlooked to date or are likely to be increasingly significant in future. The second part examines international criminal processes and procedures, and here the authors discuss issues such as victim participation and the rights of the accused. The third part is a discussion of complementarity and sentencing, while the final part of the book looks at international criminal justice in context. The authors raise issues which are likely to provide the most significant challenges and most promising opportunities for the continuing development of this body of law. As international criminal law becomes more established as a distinct discipline, it becomes imperative for international criminal scholarship to provide a degree of critical analysis, both of individual legal issues and of the international criminal project as a whole. This book represents an important collective effort to introduce an element of legal realism or critical legal studies into the academic discourse.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations
List of Cases
Notes on Contributors
Preface

Introduction
Niamh Hayes, Yvonne McDermott and William A. Schabas

Part I: International crimes and modes of liability

Sisyphus Wept: Prosecuting Sexual Violence at the International Criminal Court
Niamh Hayes
Creating a Framework for the Prosecution of Environmental Crimes in International Criminal Law
Tara Smith
Alleged Aggression in Utopia: An International Criminal Law Examination Question for 2020
Roger S. Clark
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon and Terrorism as an International Crime: Reflections on the Judicial Function
Ben Saul
Damned If You Don’t: Liability for Omissions in International Criminal Law

Christopher Gosnell
Joint Criminal Enterprise Liability: Result Orientated Justice
Wayne Jordash

Part II: the InternatIonaL criminal process

Rights in Reverse: A Critical Analysis of Fair Trial Rights under International Criminal Law
Yvonne McDermott
Victims’ Participation at the International Criminal Court : Benefit or Burden?
Lorraine Smith-van Lin
A Shifting Scale of Power: Who is in Charge of the Charges at the International Criminal Court
Dov Jacobs
Distinguishing Creativity from Activism: International Criminal Law and the ‘Legitimacy’ of Judicial Development of the Law
Joseph Powderly
Equality of Arms in International Criminal Law : Continuing Challenges
Charles Chernor Jalloh and Amy DiBella
Protecting the Rights of the Accused in International Criminal Proceedings: Lip Service or Affirmative Action?
Colleen Rohan
Reconciliation and Sentencing in the Practice of the ad hoc Tribunals
Silvia D’Ascoli

Part III: Complementarity and sentencing: a discussion

A Sentence-Based Theory of Complementarity
Kevin Jon Heller
‘Sentencing Horror’ or ‘Sentencing Heuristic’? A Reply to Heller’s ‘Sentence-Based’ Theory of Complementarity
Carsten Stahn
Three Theories of Complementarity: Charge, Sentence or Process? A Comment on Kevin Heller’s Sentence-Based Theory of Complementarity
Darryl Robinson

 Part IV: InternatIonaL criminal justice in context

The Short Arm of International Criminal Law
William A. Schabas
Palestine and the Politics of International Criminal Justice
Michael Kearney and John Reynolds
Lions and Tigers and Deterrence, Oh My: Evaluating Expectations of International Criminal Justice
Kate Cronin-Furman and Amanda Taub
Hybrid Courts in Retrospect: Of Lost Legacies and Modest Futures
Pádraig McAuliffe
‘Political Trials’? The UN Security Council and the Development of International Criminal Law
David P. Forsythe
Expanding the Focus of the ‘African Criminal Court’
Kai Ambos
The Future of International Criminal Law and Transitional Justice
Mark A. Drumbl

Index

William A. SCHABAS, Yvonne McDERMOTT, Niamh HAYES, The Ashgate Research Companion to International Criminal Law: Critical Perspectives, Londres, Ashgate, 2013 (600 pp.)