ABSTRACT
With the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) by a diplomatic conference, there is how a significant possibility, though not a certainty, that the requisite number of ratifications will be achieved, the Statute will enter into force, and a permanent international criminal court will come into operation. One new conditioning factor affects all the scenarios and merits some initial remarks. Though the idea of an international criminal tribunal has been discussed throughout the twentieth century, it was the apparently successful experience of the ad hoc Nuremberg and Far Eastern Military Tribunals that forged popular conceptions about the possibilities and circumstances for using the technique of a permanent institution to dispense criminal justice in international politics. Traditionally, the law of armed conflict has assumed a war between two states, each with a hierarchically organized military force, confronting each other across a spatial domain and seeking to subdue the other by the delivery of kinetic weapons.
