ABSTRACT
In the debate that has taken place over the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court (ICC) exercising jurisdiction over the nationals of states not party to the ICC treaty, a controversy largely sparked by US opposition to the treaty, a series of first principles have been ignored. These principles in the arena of international law and policy are the glue that holds the system together — without them, international law is not a “normative system,” as Rosalyn Higgins and others have so passionately argued, but is simply bits and pieces of legal text, a set of discrete rules without any particular coherence. 1 Not only are these principles theoretical rules governing the formation and application of international law, but they also were relied upon by the framers of the Rome Statute in elaborating the text of the ICC treaty, find voice in the draft statutes elaborated by the International Law Commission that formed the basis of the statute ultimately adopted, and informed the discussions of delegates during the preparatory meetings prior to the ICC treaty’s adoption as well as the conversations and negotiations that took place during the diplomatic conference held in Rome during the summer of 1998, at which the Court’s statute was adopted.
