Dr Stephen Humphreys, NAB 5.12 (course convenor).
Guest lecturers will include:
Dr Chaloka Beyani (LSE)
Dr. Michael Kearney (Visiting Fellow, LSE)
Prof. Gerry Simpson (University of Melbourne)

For LLM students, MSc Criminal Justice Policy and MSc Human Rights.

This full-unit course on international criminal law seeks to place this burgeoning field of practice in its historical and political context. The course will examine the rationale for the introduction of criminal procedures and institutions at international level, and the degree to which the field is achieving - and is capable of achieving - its stated objectives. It will cover the conceptual and practical problems associated with the turn to legalised retribution and the criminalisation of hitherto political activities, with a view to assessing the field's trajectory and progress.

The course looks back at the history of and background to international criminal law: developments at Versailles following the First World War, at Nuremberg and Tokyo following the Second and in the Balkans and Rwanda following the Cold War. It will examine the four core crimes set out in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and aggression), as well as recent discussions surrounding the crimes of torture and terrorism. It will look at institutional arrangements - at the ICC and the ad hoc and 'hybrid' tribunals - as well as procedural issues, including immunity, defences and modes of participation. It will also cover corporate complicity in international crimes.

Teaching is by seminar. There is normally one two-hour seminar each week. There may be back-up classes, (up to four per term).

Students may submit two 2,000 word essays. Students are asked to choose from past exam papers and submit by the end of Week 3 in Michaelmas and Lent terms respectively.

Gary Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton, 2000); Judith Shklar, Legalism (Harvard, 1964); Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (Penguin, 1997); Gerry Simpson, Law, War and Crime, (Polity, 2007).

A three-hour written examination, based on the entire syllabus (100%).