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Dr Devika Hovell CKK 7.06

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Human Rights and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places and demand is typically high. This may mean that you’re not able to get a place on this course.

The ‘justice cascade’ of international criminal prosecutions may have started as a trickle but is generating momentum. The last few decades have witnessed the establishment of a steady stream of tribunals exercising international criminal jurisdiction, including ad hocs, hybrids, specialist courts and of course the permanent International Criminal Court. In more recent years, there has been a surge in the domestic prosecution of international crimes through the mechanism of universal jurisdiction. This bricolage of international criminal prosecutions is appropriately recognised as an emerging (decentralised) international criminal justice system. In the first half of the course, we will examine the different fora available for the prosecution of international crimes. The second half of the course will focus on the practice and procedure of the International Criminal Court through the lens of the different actors engaged: the judges, the Office of the Prosecutor, the accused, defence counsel, victims and states. The course takes practical, theoretical and critical approaches to issues such as jurisdiction, complementarity, selectivity, modes of liability, defences, victim participation and immunity.

This course will have two hours of teaching content each week in Winter Term in the form of a two hour seminar. There will be a Reading Week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

One 1500 word essay.

Reading lists will be provided for each week’s seminar on Moodle. Indicative reading includes Jose Alvarez, ‘Crimes of States/Crimes of Hate: Lessons from Rwanda’ (1999) 24 Yale Journal of International Law 365; Henry Kissinger, ‘The Pitfalls of Universal Jurisdiction’, Foreign Affairs (July 2001); Darryl Robinson, ‘Inescapable Dyads: Why the International Criminal Court Cannot Win’ (2015) 28 Leiden Journal of International Law 323; Sara Kendall and Sarah Nouwen, 'Representational Practices: The Gap Between Juridified and Abstract Victimhood' (2013) 76(3) Law and Contemporary Problems 235. Students may wish to refer to Robert Cryer et al., An Introduction to International Criminal Law and Procedure (Cambridge, 2019), 4th edition.

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes) in the spring exam period.