Who Is Afraid of the Crime of Aggression?

Abstract

Immediately after the historic adoption of the aggression amendments on 14 December 2017, a number of participants in the negotiations expressed their belief that activating the crime of aggression would help deter states from engaging in the illegal use of force. Unfortunately, the version of the crime adopted in New York is but a pale shadow of the kind of criminal prohibition capable of convincing would-be aggressors that they will be held accountable for their acts. Instead, as this article explains, the crime of aggression at the ICC is so jurisdictionally narrow, so substantively limited, and so unlikely to promote domestic prosecutions that its deterrent value is essentially nonexistent.

Keywords: ICL, international criminal law, aggression, deterrence, use of force, jus ad bellum