Introduction

“International crimes” is a concept of considerable definitional ambiguity. The eminent British international law scholar Georg Schwarzenberger, writing in 1950, concluded that “international criminal law in any true sense does not exist.” Defining international law narrowly to cover only those rights and obligations of states and not those of individuals, Schwarzenberger was of the opinion that “an international criminal law that is meant to be applied to the world powers is a contradiction in terms. It presupposes an international authority which is superior to these States.”

Turning to piracy and war crimes, the examples most often “adduced as evidence par excellence of the existence of international criminal law,” Schwarzenberger denied that these actions constitute crimes under international law. Rather, in his view:

Most other commentators have arrived at a different conclusion. With respect to piracy the International Law Commission, a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly, in drafting the articles on piracy that ultimately helped constitute the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Law of the High Seas, adopted what Alfred Rubin has termed the “naturalist” model.