The concept and nature of transnational criminal law

‘Transnational criminal law’ describes a category of domestic crimes established through treaty obligations in multilateral conventions such as the 1988 Vienna Convention¹ – the so-called ‘treaty crimes’² or ‘crimes of international concern’.³ States enforce their own criminal laws, thus expressing their sovereignty; and yet because of sovereignty, they must rely on the sovereignty of other states if they are to enforce their laws against transnational criminals that operate extraterritorially. Through the crime suppression conventions states parties embrace tortious or delictual treaty obligations to criminalise the activities specified in those conventions and to adopt procedural provisions that enable them to cooperate with other states which seek to establish and exercise jurisdiction over the criminals concerned.