What is an International Crime?

Abstract

This chapter defends a pluralist account of International Criminal Law (ICL). In contrast to other approaches to defining international crimes, I argue, as both a descriptive and a normative matter, that there is no hard and fast distinction between international of­ fences and so-called ‘ordinary’ offences. Instead, there exists a continuum of regulation in which international law asserts varying degrees of non-exhaustive force over the criminal law. This pluralism derives principally from the normative underpinnings of ICL that, I ar­ gue, is concerned less with the prosecution of offences that are uniquely international in some qualitative sense than with protecting universal human values through a division of labour between international and domestic institutions. I develop this account through consideration of the historical evolution of ICL, the difficulties associated with competing positive law explanations of international crime, and the diversity of institutional respons­ es that make of use of ICL.

Keywords: International criminal law, international crimes, international human rights, pluralism, prosecution, preventive action