Introduction

The creation of a permanent international criminal court with potentially worldwide jurisdiction is one of the most important developments in international criminal law. The Statute of the International Criminal Court not only establishes a new judicial institution to investigate and try international offences, but also sets out a new code of international criminal law. This chapter describes the steps leading to the establishment of the ICC, its principal features, and some of the legal and political responses to it.

The creation of the ICC

The first serious proposal for an international court was probably that made in 1872 by Gustav Moynier, one of the founders of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who was concerned that national judges would not be able fairly to judge offences committed in wars in which their countries had been involved. Nothing came of this and in spite of the so-called Nuremberg Promise that the trials after the Second World War would set a precedent for others, there was no early successor to the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals to prosecute international crimes at the international level. A proposal to set up a permanent international criminal court was discussed during the negotiations on the 1948 Genocide Convention, but the Convention as agreed looks only to the possibility of such a court in the future.