Imputed Criminal Liability and the Goals of International Justice

Leiden Journal of International Law

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 377-404

  Darcy, Shane ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

command responsibility; criminal liability; international criminal tribunals; joint criminal enterprise

Indexed keywords

EID: 85009599344     PISSN: 09221565     EISSN: 14789698     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0922156507004116     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. See, e.g. United Nations War Crimes Commission, History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Development of the Laws of War (1948), 87–104;
2. ‘Memorandum to President Roosevelt from the Secretaries of State and War and the Attorney General, January 22, 1945’ (Document I); Report of Robert H. Jackson United States Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945,Washington: United States Department of State, 1949, 3, at 6-7.
3. See also ‘Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on the Enforcement of Penalties, Report Presented to the Preliminary Peace Conference, March 19, 1919’, (1920) 14 AJIL 95, at 116-17.
4. H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1994 [1963]), at 253. The Court itself in Eichmann had acknowledged the distance which had to be kept from the broad array of related issues with which it had been confronted during the trial, and stated that although, for example,material and evidence accumulated in the trial would be of considerable use to researchers and historians in the future, benefits ‘are to be regarded as by-products of the trial’, Attorney-General of the Government of Israel v. Adolf Eichmann, Israel, District Court of Jerusalem, 12 December 1961, Criminal Case No. 40/61, para. 2.
5. See further S. Darcy, Collective Responsibility and Accountability under International Law (2007), 197–255, 293-357.
6. W. A. Schabas, ‘Mens Rea and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’, (2003) 37 New England School of Law Journal 1015, at 1032.
7. Prosecutor v. Tadić, Appeals Chamber Judgement,
8. Prosecutor v. Milan Martić, Amended Indictment, Case No. IT-95-11, 14 July 2003, para. 3.
9. Prosecutor v. Tadić, Appeals Chamber Judgement,
10. A. Marston Danner and J. S. Martinez, ‘Guilty Associations: Joint Criminal Enterprise, Command Responsibility, and the Development of International Criminal Law’, (2005) 93 California Law Review 75, at 109.
11. See G. Werle and F. Jessberger, ‘“Unless Otherwise Provided”:Art. 30 of the ICCStatuteandthe Mental Element of Crimes under International Criminal Law’, (2005) 3 Journal of International Criminal Justice 35.
12. See, however, G. P. Fletcher and J. D. Ohlin, ‘Reclaiming Fundamental Principles of Criminal Law in the Darfur Case’, (2005) 3 Journal of International Criminal Justice 539, at 548-50.
13. M. J. Osiel, ‘Modes of Participation in Mass Atrocity’, (2005) 38 Cornell International Law Journal 793. The doctrine is apparently referred to by Prosecutors at the Tribunals as the ‘just-convict-everyone liability concept’.
14. See also M. E. Badar, ‘“Just Convict Everyone!” - Joint Perpetration: From Tadić to Stakićand Back Again’, (2006) 6 International Criminal Law Review 293, at 302.
15. H. Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres (1646), Book II, Ch. XXI, trans. Francis W. Kelsey, Vol. II (1925), 523.
16. The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, November 1948,
17. International Military Tribunal for the Far East, excerpted in L. Friedman (ed.), The Law of War: A Documentary History, Vol. II (1972), 1029, at 1039.
18. A. Ashworth, Principles of Criminal Law (2003), at 47.
19. J. Feinberg, ‘Collective Responsibility’, in J. Feinberg, Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility (1970), 222, at 230-1.
20. See also D. Ormerod, Smith & Hogan Criminal Law (2005), at 224-34.
21. M. Damas. ka, The Shadow Side of Command Responsibility, (2001) 49 American Journal of Comparative Law 455, at 464.
22. C. Bell, C. Campbell, and F. N.L. Aola in, Justice Discourses in Transition, (2004) 13 Social and Legal Studies 3, at
23. See K. R. Chaney, Pitfalls and Imperatives: Applying the Lessons of Nuremberg to the Yugoslav War Crimes Trials, (1995) 14 Dickinson Journal of International Law 57, at 75.
24. J. N. Maogoto, War Crimes and Realpolitik: International Justice from World War I to the 21st Century (2004), at 100-6.
25. R. Zacklin, ‘The Failings of Ad Hoc International Tribunals’ (2004) 2 Journal of International Criminal Justice 541, at 542.
26. See also M. Humphrey, The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation: From Terror to Trauma (2002),
27. 135; R. Teitel, ‘Bringing the Messiah through the Law’, in C. Hesse and R. Post (eds.), Human Rights in Political Transition: Gettysburg to Bosnia (1999), 177, at 179.
28. R. Minear, Victor's Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (1971). In the context of Rwanda see Humphrey, note 93, at 137. In the context of the ICTY, there is a similar perception among certain groupings in Bosnia and Herzegovina;
29. see L. E. Fletcher and H. Weinstein, ‘AWorld unto Itself? The Application of International Justice in the Former Yugoslavia’, in E. Stover and H. Weinstein (eds.), My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity (2004), 29, at 40-1.
30. See Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 2000, available at http://www.un.org/icty/ pressreal/nato061300.htm. See generally R. Cryer, Prosecuting International Crimes;
31. Selectivity and the International Criminal Law Regime (2005).
32. See also M. Mandel, How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes against Humanity (2004).
33. W. A. Schabas, The UN International Criminal Tribunals (2006), at 68.
34. For a German perspective on this issue see H. Ehard, ‘The Nuremberg Trial against the Major War Criminal Trials and International Law’, in W. E. Benton and G. Grimm (eds.), Nuremberg: German Views of the War Trials (1955), 76.
35. ‘Affirmation of the Principles of International Law recognised by the Charter of the Nü rnberg Tribunal’, GA Res. 95(I), Fifty-fifth plenarymeeting, 11 December 1946.
36. See J. M. Kamatali, ‘The Challenge of Linking International Criminal Justice and National Reconciliation: The Case of the ICTR’, (2003) 16 LJIL 115.
37. See M.A. Drumbl, ‘Collective Violence and Individual Punishment: The Criminality of Mass Atrocity’, (2005) 99 Northwestern University Law Review 539, at 596-602.
38. Related criticism ismadeof the ICTYfor conducting its work in primarily foreign languages and for relying on unfamiliar legal rules; see I. Šimonović, ‘Attitudes and Types of Reaction toward Past War Crimes and Human Rights Abuses’, (2004) 29 Yale Journal of International Law 343, at 358.
39. As described by the Nuremberg Tribunal; see International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg), Judgment and Sentences, 1 October 1946, repr. in (1947) 41 AJIL 1, 172, at 186. Art. 5(2) of the Rome Statute sets out the way in which crime of aggression will come within the Court's jurisdiction.
40. L. E. Fletcher, ‘From Indifference to Engagement: Bystanders and International Criminal Justice’, (2005) 26 Michigan Journal of International Law 1013, at 1022, noting
41. P. Akhavan, ‘The International Criminal Court in Context:Mediating the Global and Local in the Age of Accountability’, (2003) 97 AJIL, at 720.
42. E. Stover and H. Weinstein, ‘Introduction: Conflict, Justice and Reclamation’, in Stover and Weinstein,
43. ‘Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on the Enforcement of Penalties’,
44. J. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II (1999), at 474.
45. D. Corkalo et al. ‘Neighbors Again? Intercommunity Relations after Ethnic Cleansing’, Stover and Weinstein,
46. B. Ivanisevic, ‘Command Responsibility Is Not a Form of Strict Liability’, Danas, 25 June 2004, available at http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/06/25/serbia8982.htm.
47. See generally W. H. Parks, ‘Command Responsibility for War Crimes’, (1973) 62 Military Law Review 1.
48. See also K.C. Moghalu, ‘Image and Reality of War Crimes Justice: External Perceptions of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’, (2002) 26 Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 2, at 21.
49. ‘Addressof Antonio Cassese,Presidentof the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to the United Nations General Assembly’, 14 November 1994, available at http://www.un.org/icty/rapportan/genas-94.htm.
50. A.-M. Prévost, ‘Race and War Crimes: The 1945 War Crimes Trial of General Tomoyuki Yamashita’, (1992) 14 Human Rights Quarterly 303, at 335.
51. T. Taylor, ‘The Course of Military Justice’, New York Times, 2 Feb. 1972, 39;
52. Human Rights Watch, Getting Awaywith Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees (2006).
53. For the original proposal see Col. M.C. Bernays, G-1, ‘Subject: Trial of European War Criminals’, 15 September 1944 (Document 16), in B.F. Smith, The American Road to Nuremberg;
54. The Documentary Record 1944-1945 (1982), 33.
55. ‘Minutes of Conference Session of July 23, 1945’ (Document XLIV), Report of Robert H. Jackson, United States Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945 (1949), 328, at 332.
56. A. J. Merritt and R. L. Merritt, Public Opinion in Occupied Germany: The OMGUS Surveys, 1945–1949 (1970), at 35.
57. H. Kelsen, ‘Will the Judgement in the Nuremberg Trial Constitute a Precedent in International Law?’, (1947) 1 (2) International Law Quarterly 153, at 165-7.
58. See also Q. Wright, ‘International Law and Guilt by Association’, (1949) 43 AJIL 746, at 754.
59. See, e.g. the failed proposal by a committee of French jurists to include the concept in the Statute of the ICTY: Letter dated 10 February 1993 from the Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General, S/25266, repr. in V. Morris and M. P. Scharf, An Insider's Guide to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Vol. 2 (1995), 327, at 343-4.
60. See D. Joyce, ‘The Historical Function of International Criminal Trials: Re-thinking International Criminal Law’, (2004) 73 Nordic Journal of International Law 461.
61. See M. Imbleau, ‘Initial Truth Establishment by Transitional Bodies and the Fight against Denial’, in W. A. Schabas and S. Darcy (eds.), Truth Commissions and Courts: The Tension between Criminal Justice and the Search for Truth (2005), 159.
62. See, e.g. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe,War Crimes Before Domestic Courts (2003), at 51;
63. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Mission in Kosovo, Kosovo's War Crimes Trials: A Review (2002), at 44–5.
64. M. Bohlander, ‘The Transfer of Cases from International Criminal Tribunals to National Courts’, Paper presented at the Colloquium of Prosecutors of International Criminal Tribunals, Arusha, 25-27 November 2004, at 30, available at http://69.94.11.53/ENGLISH/colloquium04/bohlander/Bohlander.pdf. See s. 16, UNTAET Regulation 2000/15 of 6 June 2000 on the Establishment of Panels with Exclusive Jurisdiction over Serious Criminal Offences.
65. C. Campbell, ‘Peace and the Laws of War: The Role of International Humanitarian Law in the Post-conflict Environment’, (2000) 83 International Review of the Red Cross 627.
66. K. Ambos, ‘Superior Responsibility’, in A. Cassese, P. Gaeta, and J. R.W. D. Jones (eds.), The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: A Commentary, Vol. 1 (2002), 823, at 847.
67. M. Osiel, ‘The Banality of Good: Aligning Incentives against Mass Atrocity’, (2005) 105 Columbia Law Review 1751.