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The (Non-) Use of African Law by the International Criminal Court

Manley, Stewart, Tehrani, Pardis Moslemzadeh and Rasiah, Rajah (2023) The (Non-) Use of African Law by the International Criminal Court. European Journal of International Law, 34 (3). pp. 555-580. ISSN 1464-3596

Item Type: Article

Abstract

All defendants before the International Criminal Court (ICC) to date have been African, with their alleged crimes having been committed, at least partly, on African soil. When turning to national laws to resolve issues of interpretation in these cases, should the ICC see whether it can use laws of the African state in which the crime occurred? This article argues that it should, but observes – from a dataset of 16,192 citations containing over 200 citations to national laws – that it rarely does. Instead, it turns much more often to Western European and US laws. This phenomenon, the article suggests, troublingly reflects and perpetuates the marginalization of African and other global South laws from what constitutes international law. The article also argues that the Rome Statute requires the ICC to at least examine for appropriateness the laws of a subset of these neglected systems (‘the national laws of States that would normally exercise jurisdiction over the crime’) when identifying general principles of law. There are several compelling reasons to extend this examination requirement to African and other global South country laws more broadly, and even when not dealing with general principles of law, and few reasons not to.

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More Information

Depositing User: Pardis Tehrani

Identifiers

Item ID: 18269
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chad035
ISSN: 1464-3596
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/18269
Official URL: https://academic.oup.com/ejil/article/34/3/555/723...

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Pardis Moslemzadeh Tehrani: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9698-8698

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 24 Sep 2024 13:34
Last Modified: 24 Sep 2024 13:34

Contributors

Author: Pardis Moslemzadeh Tehrani ORCID iD
Author: Stewart Manley
Author: Rajah Rasiah

University Divisions

Faculty of Business, Law and Tourism > School of Law

Subjects

Law > Law

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