The shadow of politics in the administration of international criminal justice: an analysis of how the Rome statute insulates the international criminal court from political influence

Abstract

The quest for a permanent international criminal court began long before the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998.1 When the United Nations General Assembly approved the Genocide Convention in 1948, it charged the International Law Commission with the responsibility to carry out a study on the possibility and desirability of establishing an international judicial organ for the prosecution of, inter alia, the crime of genocide.2 …” It is understandable that a community such as the international community, in seeking a more structured organization, even if only an incipient 'institutionalization', should have turned in another direction, namely toward a system vesting in international institutions other than States the exclusive responsibility, first, for determining the existence of a breach of an obligation of basic importance to the international community as a whole, and thereafter, for deciding what measures should be taken in response and how they should be implemented.3 However, despite the so-called Nuremberg promise that the trials after the Second World War would set a precedent for others, it was not until 1994 that the ILC produced the final draft for the statute of an international court.