The principle of complementarity is the cornerstone of the establishment of the International Criminal Court as well as one of the key factors for its successful operation.  Having said that, the qualities of being flexible and adaptable make the task of interpreting the principle of complementarity extremely sensitive and technically tricky.  According to the current wording of the principle of complementarity in the Rome Statute, the ICC could factually exercise primacy over the national jurisdiction, if a loose interpretation of the principle is adopted, or conversely being residual to national jurisdictions, if the principle was strictly interpreted. While the principle of complementarity was at the heart of the negotiating process for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, the emerging practice of the Court to date has left the vast majority of the questions on complementarity unanswered, even the few issues which the Court has touched upon are not immune from criticism. This thesis will thus strive, through an in-depth analysis of the past, present and practice of the principle of complementarity and its corollary issues, to offer workable answers as well as constructive criticism.  Guided by the central objective of ending impunity for the core crimes through criminal justice, this thesis, in interpreting the principle of complementarity, will follow a balanced approach which, while unequivocally favours national prosecutions where possible, it adopts a broadening interpretation when national jurisdictions are genuinely unavailable or ineffective.  To this end, this thesis eventually presents the principle of complementarity as a managerial principle which promotes for the effective investigation and prosecution of the core crimes through the adoption of different policies which encourage, <i>inter alia</i>, a division of labour between the International Criminal Court and domestic jurisdictions, and enable states to carry out proceedings and overcome dilemmas of ‘inability’ or ‘unwillingness’ without the role of the International Criminal Court being limited in such incidents to excluding national jurisdiction.

Terrorism as a crime under international law The purpose of this thesis is to assess the possibility of prosecuting terrorist attacks as crimes under international law and analyse the feasibility of their prosecution before the International Criminal Court. The reason for this research is is twofold. First, compared to the international academic scene, Czech research related to this topic is relatively sparse. Second, the international terrorism has grown into a massive issue of international significance and its global aspects leave the traditional national judicial mechanisms somewhat lacking with regards to the efficiency in its prosecution. The author has therefore attempted to examine the possibility of using the only permanent global judicial body available in today's world, the International Criminal Court. The thesis is composed of six chapters, each of them dealing with different aspects of prosecuting the terrorism as an international crime. Chapter One is introductory and defines basic thoughts upon which this thesis builds. It also presents the structure of the thesis with regards to possible issues which may arise during its course. It also explains the reasons for said research as described in the first paragraph of this abstract. Chapter Two is concerned with the term terror and...

The Rome Statute which came to existence in 1998 was a great step forward for international criminal law and its enforcement. Later, in 2002, the International Criminal Court was established in order to prosecute the most serious crimes according to the Statute - war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. Only the first three mentioned were specified in the Statute, while the fourth one was not agreed upon, meaning that the ICC does not possess jurisdiction over this crime. The aim of the Revision Conference in Kampala in 2010 was to incorporate the definition of the crime of aggression into the Rome Statute. Finally, the International Court had to gain jurisdiction over a crime of aggression. However the expectations were not fully met. The states agreed upon the definition which they specified in the Rome Statute; nevertheless the jurisdiction of the ICC has not yet been activated. This will probably happen in 2017 at the earliest if preconditions and triggering mechanisms are completed. The purpose of the thesis The Crime of Aggression and the International Criminal Court is to examine the questions related to aggression. The thesis begins with the historical development of the concept and continues with the most relevant international law provisions connected to...

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT AND THE HEAD OF THE STATE IMMUNITY The thesis deals with the institute of immunities of the head of the state recognized under the international law and with its applicability before the International Criminal Court (hereinafter referred to as "ICC"). The aim of this thesis is to analyze the conflict between two international legal rules which is the obligation to prosecute and punish perpetrators of crimes under the international law, irrespective of the status of the offender, and the exclusion of heads of the state from the criminal jurisdiction because of the immunity that protects its bearer. According to the Rome Statute (hereinafter referred to as "Statute") which established the ICC its contractual party is obliged to surrender any accused person to the Court even if this person enjoys immunity. However another provision of the Statute says that the request for this surrender could be refused by the party if it broke an obligation which this party has against the state whose national is the accused person. The first chapter outlines the formation and the functioning of the Court. Subsequently, the work deals with theoretical terms such as the head of state, the individual responsibility or the immunity. It provides with the types of immunities a person could enjoy...

1 Summary Crimes against humanity, together with war crimes, crime of agression and Genocide, create a group of so called crimes under the international law. For these crimes it is characteristical that they are so grave and so dangerous that their punishment is a matter of the whole international community. Such punishment for these crimes has already been carried out several times on international level. As an example we can use the tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which are still operating. This thesis deals with crimes against humanity in practice of International Criminal Court. This court, unlike the previous international criminal tribunals, is a permanent judicial institution. The main focus of the research is a substantive law characteristic of crimes against humanity i.e., physical and mental elements of these crimes. The aim of the thesis is to find out whether the International Criminal Court brought some progress to substantive law definition of aforementioned crimes. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter deals with the position of crimes against humanity in the system of the international law. The aim of this chapter is to define the basic terms of the subject and to determine the position of crimes against humanity in the system of the international law. The...

This thesis deals with crimes against humanity and war crimes in the practice of the International Criminal Court, an institution established to prosecute the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole (which include, in addition to the two types mentioned above, genocide and crimes of aggression). Prosecution of these crimes changed significantly from the military tribunals following World War II to the ad hoc tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and finally to the International Criminal Court, which was created as a permanent international institution in 1998 at the Rome Conference and became operational in 2002 after its Statute reached the required number of ratifications. The aim of this thesis is to introduce how crimes against humanity and war crimes have been conceived in the practice of the International Criminal Court with respect to the development of their concept and prosecution by the previous criminal tribunals. The thesis is divided into three main chapters. In the first one, I introduce the topic, specifically the development of the idea to establish a permanent international criminal tribunal as well as its eventual establishment. Furthermore, the first chapter also includes a theoretical introduction to the jurisdiction of the International...

The diploma thesis analyzes the relationship between the Czech Republic and the International Criminal Court. The purpose of my research was to compare the Rome Statute, an international treaty by which the International Criminal Court was established in 1998, with the Czech constitutional and criminal law. The Czech Republic ratified the Rome Statute in 2009. The Czech Republic committed itself by this ratification to provide for international judicial cooperation and legal assistance to the International Criminal Court. It is necessary to realize that a lot of crimes against international criminal law happen in the today's world and many of these crimes are under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The Czech Republic has to be ready to act, if the need occurs, a so it is necessary to know how the Czech authorities would proceed and if all of the obligations under the Rome Statute are possible to be realized in accordance with the national law. For this reason this thesis attempts to clarify the link between the Rome Statute and the relevant Czech legislation. So I have made a comparison of the Rome Statute and Czech legal system and tried to find answers for the following questions: whether the Rome Statute is in accordance with the constitutional order of the Czech Republic,...

The International Criminal Court and the principle of complementarity Abstract The principle of complementarity is often referred to as the cornerstone of the International Criminal Court's functioning ("Court" or "ICC"), so the purpose of my thesis is to analyze complementarity in more detail. The Preamble of the Rome Statute ("Statute") provides that the Court "shall be complementary to national criminal jurisdictions". Complementarity means that the ICC will act only when domestic authorities fail to take the certain steps in the investigation or prosecution of crimes enumerated under article 5 of the Statute. My thesis consists of seven chapters. First three chapters are introductory and show a historical and practical background of the establishment of the ICC. Chapter four explains that there exist various forms of the relationship between an international criminal jurisdiction and national jurisdictions, not just complementary. This chapter is subdivided into several parts which firstly describe a particular forms of these relationships and then give an example of such a relations existing in reality. The following chapter inquires into the roots of complementary idea. It highlights that the principle of complementarity included in the Statute was not the outcome of the International Law Commission's...

Thesis advisor: David Rasmussen / This thesis begins by analyzing three different philosophies on human rights. It looks to the foundations of these theories, but focuses primarily on the obligations that each system creates. It evaluates cosmopolitanism and two different institutionalist arguments, eventually settling on a tiered system of international responsibility as the strongest and most practical conception of rights. The second chapter of the thesis discusses the role of the International Criminal Court as a part of this tiered system, and as a means to promote human rights across the globe. This section evaluates the court by considering its historical foundations, its goals and responsibilities, and its actions over the past ten years. It concludes by providing recommendations for the future of the court. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

At the outset the International Criminal Court (ICC) was heralded as a revolution within international society, but it has since found itself at the centre of much controversy and debate. According to the Rome Statute’s Preamble, a broad aim of the ICC is: “to guarantee lasting respect for and the enforcement of international justice”. However, a review of the critical literature surrounding the ICC uncovered a noticeable lack of discussions applying theoretical understandings of justice to neither the Court’s design nor operations; a gap in the literature that the thesis aims to address. Moreover, the review identified that the primary concerns regarding the ICC’s performance all focussed on stakeholder practices. Combining these two observations, the thesis hypothesised that the controversies and issues facing the ICC emerged because the practice of the Court’s primary stakeholders has been incompatible with the demands of justice. In order to test this hypothesis, the thesis analyses the compatibility of the ICC with what the thesis identifies as the core theoretical demands of justice across three areas: purpose, procedure, and stakeholder practice. It does this by building a theoretical framework from the justice literature which is then used to analyse and critique data relating to the ICC’s purposes, procedures and stakeholder practices gathered from empirical observations, interviews, official documents and speeches. The thesis concludes that, for the most part, it is the practice of ICC stakeholders that have been incompatible with the demands of justice, not the Court’s purposes or procedures.