LibGuides: Public International Law Research: International Criminal Court

International Criminal Court

General Overview of the International Criminal Court

Creation of the ICC under the Rome Statute

The International Criminal Court was created in July 2002 with the entry into force of the Rome Statute. As of 2018, there are 123 states that are party to the Rome Statute, and thus are subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

The Rome Statute empowers the ICC to investigate and prosecute the following crimes:

Genocide
War Crimes
Crimes against Humanity
Crime of Aggression

In order to investigate and prosecute an individual through the ICC, the state where the crime was allegedly committed, or the state of the accused's nationality, must either be a party to the Rome Statute or have consented to ad hoc jurisdiction for that specific case.

Structure of the ICC

The Rome Statute divides the ICC into separate organs, each with specific responsibilities in the investigation and prosecution of cases. The following table outlines those organs and their essential functions.

Assembly of the States Parties	Provides management oversight for the ICC. The Assembly of States Parties provides oversight for the Presidency, Prosecutor, and the Registrar of the court. This organ also adopts the Rules of Procedure and Evidence and develops the Elements of Crime. It is composed of representatives which have ratified or acceded to the Rome Statute.
Presidency	Conducts external relations with States, coordinates judicial matters such as assigning judges, situations and cases to divisions, and oversees the Registry's administrative work.
Judicial Divisions	18 judges are divided into three divisions - pre-trial, trial, and appeals. This organ conducts judicial proceedings, issue arrest warrants, order witness protection measures, and render decisions in trials.
Office of the Prosecutor	Examines situations under the jurisdiction of the court, carries out investigations and conducts prosecutions against individuals responsible for crimes within the purview of the ICC.
Registry	Provides administrative support for the other organs, including judicial support and management of court records, external outreach support, and management of the budget and security for the ICC.

The United States signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but it never ratified the treaty and has stated that it does not intend to do so. Thus, the United States is not subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC. To read more about U.S. objections to the ICC, see this American Bar Association explanation.

Online ICC Primary Materials

Online Primary ICC Material

Core ICC Texts

The following collection contains the main legal tools that provide for the creation and maintenance of the ICC. These materials include the procedural and evidentiary rules for the ICC, outlines of the elements of crimes, and regulations related to the administration of the court.

The following are direct links to the three foundational ICC documents:

ICC Legal Tools

This collection contains the basic legal documents for the ICC, along with over 9,000 documents related to the negotiation of the ICC Statute, the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, and Elements of Crime documents.

Cases, Court Records, and Transcripts

The ICC has many of its trial materials freely available for download as PDFs in multiple languages. The filters on the left side of the screen allow easy discovery so that you can filer to a specific document type, decision type, or phase of the case.

If you are interested in Preliminary Investigations or Situations Under Investigation specifically, you can visit those web pages directly.

Secondary Materials

The ICC publishes articles about their latest updates and other current events regularly on their website.

An Introduction to the International Criminal Court by William A. Schabas
Call Number: KZ6310 .S33 2011
The International Criminal Court has ushered in a new era in the protection of human rights. Protecting against genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, the Court acts when national justice systems are unwilling or unable to do so. Written by the leading expert in the field, the fourth edition of this seminal text considers the Court in action: its initial rulings, cases it has prosecuted and cases where it has decided not to proceed, such as Iraq. It also examines the results of the Review Conference, by which the crime of aggression was added to the jurisdiction of the Court and addresses the political context, such as the warming of the United States to the Court and the increasing recognition of the inevitability of the institution.
The Rome Statute for an International Criminal Court by Antonio Cassese (Editor); Giorgio Gaja (Editor); Philip Kirsch (Editor); Alain Pellet (Editor); Bert Swart (Editor); Albin Eser (Editor); Paola Gaeta (Editor); John R. W. D. Jones (Editor)
Call Number: KZ6310 .R58 2002
The International Criminal Court (ICC) officially came into existence in July 2002 following the 60th ratification of the Rome Statute, heralding a new era for the effective prosecution and punishment of serious violations of international humanitarian law - genocide, war crimes and crimesagainst humanity. This two volume Commentary takes a thematic look at the whole of international criminal law, appraising the contributions of international tribunals such as the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals and the ad hoc Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well as those of national courts. It re-examines thecase law developed by these courts and tribunals, establishes to what extent the Rome Statute codifies this body of law or instead departs from it, and makes a critical assessment of the Statute as a viable working tool for international criminal justice. A third volume contains the texts of theStatute, the Rules of Procedure and Evidence and Elements of Crimes. Written by an outstanding international team of experts under the general editorship of Antonio Cassese, Paola Gaeta, and John R.W.D. Jones, this timely companion to the burgeoning field of international criminal law will be of interest to international legal scholars, practitioners and judges, andto all those who are interested in the administration of international justice and the workings of international institutions.Antonio Cassese is the Editor of the Journal of International Criminal Justice. To read sample articles from the journal visit: www.jicj.oupjournals.org
The Triggering Procedure of the International Criminal Court by Héctor Olásolo
Call Number: KZ6314 .O43 2005
The Rome Statute, unlike the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, creates a permanent court whose dormant jurisdiction covers the territory and includes the nationals of States Parties and is universal in cases where the Security Council makes a referral. Besides, unlike the ad hoc tribunals, which have jurisdiction over specific crisis situations whose personal, territorial and temporal parameters have been defined in their respective statutes by the UN Security Council, in the case of the ICC it is not possible to determine a priori in which situations the ICC will be involved. As a result, the most relevant activity of the Court is the determination of those situations regarding which the dormant jurisdiction of the Court will be triggered. The book The Triggering Procedure of the International Criminal Court constitutes the first comprehensive analysis of the proceedings that, prior to any criminal investigation, aim to make such a fundamental determination.