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Abstract:
The author discusses the interaction between international and national law in determining whether a case is admissible from the viewpoint of complementarity (Article 17 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court) and with regard to the concept of 'interests of justice' (Article 53 of the same Statute). Complementarity does not separate national from international criminal jurisdiction; nor does it put them in conflict with each other - rather, it favours the aforementioned interaction. In addition, the concepts of 'ability' and 'willingness' tend to ensure an indirect harmonization of national criminal systems around common international criteria. As for reliance on the notion of 'interests of justice' when determining whether to initiate proceedings, according to the author, Article 53 envisages a compromise between prosecutorial discretion and strict legality, thereby enshrining a hybridization between various national traditions. The author notes that the decision to open investigations should be objective and foreseeable; to this end, she suggests some general criteria, which are intended to serve as guidelines for establishing whether, in a specific case, the interests of justice warrant the initiation of proceedings.

Behçet, Corticosteroids, Erythema nodosum, Genital ulcer, Therapy

Abstract:
The law's responses to massacres seem to vacillate between two models: (i) the model of the ‘criminal law of the enemy’ inspired by the national criminal law and rendered topical again by the attacks of September 11; (ii) the model of the ‘criminal law of inhumanity’ symbolized by the paradigm of crimes against humanity. The latter model is better suited to take account of the qualitative dimension of massacres, i.e. the fact that they, besides being mass offences (quantitative criterion), also offend against humanity. To establish a ‘criminal law of inhumanity’ as a model with a universal, or universalizable, dimension, three conditions are necessary, which concern (i) the definition of the crimes, (ii) the assignment of responsibility and (iii) the nature of the punishment. As for the definition of the crime, one could implicitly deduce from the list of acts constituting crimes against humanity (Article 7 of the International Criminal Court Statute) that humanity so protected has two inseparable components: the individuality of each human being, not reducible to membership in a group, and the equal membership of each in the human community as a whole. With regard to the second condition, it is not sufficient to hold responsible the de jure or de facto leaders; intermediaries and perpetrators, at all levels of hierarchy, must also be held accountable. As for the third condition, it is not sufficient to content oneself with the watchword of the fight against impunity without bringing up the nature and functions of the punishment; hence the necessity not only to rethink the role ‘criminal’ law can play in a policy of punishment, but also to focus on prevention, reparation and reconciliation. Finally, the author suggests that the proposed model of a ‘criminal law of inhumanity’ must be built through the interplay between municipal law and international law. On the one hand, the wealth of national legal systems - also with regard to penalties and responsibility - should be better integrated into international criminal justice; on the other, national criminal systems should be better adapted to conditions of international law, through the introduction into domestic law of the definitions of the crimes and also the rules for assigning criminal responsibility.

Abstract:
Since 11 September 2001, a new paradigm has developed in criminal law. Parallel to the idea of the war on terror, a paradigm based around war on crime has emerged. Inevitably, however, a paradigm of war leads to abandoning scientific approaches based on a legal-moral vision (crime, guilt and punishment) in favour of a merely pragmatic vision, which associates national security with social defence. Based on an unclear concept of dangerousness, presumed by simple membership in a group labeled enemy , the goal is to neutralize, or even eliminate, the criminal/deviant. When combined with a denial of international protections, deconstructing national criminal law thus runs the risk of pushing a black hole through the rule of law. Many have criticized such a paradigm; however, the author points out that the paradigm of the war on crime (and more generally the war on terror), provided that it respects international law, can be useful, because it shows the need to overcome the binary opposition between war and peace, as well as between war crimes and ordinary crimes. Nonetheless, it must be clear that this paradigm can only be one of transition. To overcome the war peace dichotomy in a global community and to reconstruct the relationship between terrorism and torture, neither a war crimes nor a war on crime paradigm is truly sufficient. Only through the amplification of a paradigm of crime against humanity (itself unstable and evolving but free from the war metaphor) can we reconstruct humanity as a value and make it the cornerstone of any legal system.