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The Restatement of the Law (Fourth): The Foreign Relations Law of the United States is a monumental work, which, just like the Restatement (Third) , may prove influential abroad. This also applies to its restatement of the law of jurisdiction. The clarity of the relevant chapters on jurisdiction, including the reporters' notes, is admirable. Comparing the Restatement (Third) to the Restatement (Fourth) , it is striking that the latter places greater emphasis on US law-based jurisdictional limitations. The relevance of the customary international law of jurisdiction has correspondingly diminished, especially in regard to jurisdiction to prescribe and adjudicate. This commentary critiques this shift towards jurisdictional 'parochialism'. It singles out (i) the drafters' characterization of the principle of jurisdictional reasonableness as a principle of US statutory interpretation (prescriptive comity) rather than a customary international law norm limiting prescriptive jurisdiction and (ii) the drafters' view that the exercise of adjudicative jurisdiction is not constrained by customary international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to flesh out the implications of seeing universal jurisdiction as a claim to authority. While the idea that jurisdiction is an exercise of authority may seem obvious, the article invites attention to the ‘claim’ inherent within it, particularly where the exercise of jurisdiction intrudes upon or displaces competing claims. Legal scholars and practitioners tend to focus on the legal source of authority to exercise universal jurisdiction. The consequence is a tendency to think in binary terms; a court either has jurisdiction, in which case the matter will proceed without further attention to the question of jurisdiction, or it does not, in which case the whole matter is at an end. Jurisdictional thinking invites attention to the need for those asserting such a claim to take responsibility for these claims to authority, encouraging responsiveness to the normative communities that such claims put into relation and the potential need to rethink conventional modes of operation. The article proceeds in two parts. Part 1 examines the deficiencies in the dominant ‘legal source’ narrative on universal jurisdiction. Part 2 assesses the value of understanding the legal-political dimension of universal jurisdiction as a claim to authority that must be understood, and justified, with attention to its purpose and the community (or communities) it is intended to serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the proper method for theorizing about criminal jurisdiction. It challenges a received understanding of how to substantiate the right to punish and articulates an alternative account of how that theoretical task is properly conducted. The received view says that a special relationship is the ground of a tribunal's authority to prosecute and, hence, that a normative theory of that authority is faced with identifying a distinctive relation. The alternative account locates prosecutorial standing on an institution's capacity to address the basic reasons generating criminal liability. This reframes the normative issues at stake and has the result that various, perhaps quite heterogeneous, considerations can substantiate penal authority. It also eliminates the existence of a special relation as a necessary condition for legitimate criminal accountability. The argument proceeds by offering an analysis and account of universal jurisdiction. Not only does the alternative elegantly perform where the received view struggles, it can accommodate much of what motivates the pursuit of relational ties in existing efforts to vindicate jurisdictional conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to initiate a dialogue within international criminal law (ICL) on treaty interpretation. The state of the art is reviewed and three fundamental interpretive dilemmas are identified and analysed. In the author's view, these dilemmas need to be addressed before a method of interpretation for crimes in Articles 6, 7, and 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court can be formulated and operationalized. The ‘normative dilemma’ highlights how the normative tensions underlying ICL might be perpetuated by the interpretive imperatives in Articles 21(3) and 22(2) of the Rome Statute. The ‘interpretive aids dilemma’ concerns the respective roles of the Elements of Crimes and custom as aids to interpreting crimes in the Rome Statute. The ‘inter-temporal dilemma’ pertains to whether these crimes are ‘frozen’ or are to be interpreted in light of relevant and applicable legal developments. Throughout, the aforementioned dilemmas are grafted onto Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties to illustrate that they are, at their core, universal problems of interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author responses the comments made on his article "The Rise of International Criminal Law: Intended and Unintended Consequences" by Ken Anderson. The author discusses the system of international criminal law in Europe. He further presents the humanization and individualization angles of international humanitarian law (IHL).

Focuses on the consistency of jurisdictional immunities and judicial self-restraint with the notion of international criminal law in Great Britain. Relationship between human rights and jurisdictional immunity laws; Account of the case against General Augusto Pinochet Duarte on acts of torture; Application of jurisdictional immunities to foreign heads of state.

This paper addresses the question of the relative gravity of crimes against humanity vis-à-vis war crimes. The issue is tackled from a double perspective. First, the categories of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are compared at the general or legislative level. The analysis is mainly based on international treaties and other instruments that consider these crimes from the viewpoint of their diverse nature. The author concludes that it seems possible to infer that genocide and crimes against humanity are considered more serious than war crimes. Secondly, the paper focuses on the judicial and sentencing implications of the determination of the degree of gravity of crimes. In this perspective, it examines Nuremberg and post-Second World War jurisprudence as well as case law of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The issue of national regulations concerning penalties applicable to the different categories of crimes is then tackled. This section of the paper also confirms that there is room for concluding that crimes against humanity are considered more serious than war crimes. However, the author stresses that, at the present stage of evolution of international criminal law, any possible answer can only be tentative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]