ABSTRACT
Since the seventeenth century, Western legal theory has confined the law to a particular jurisdiction or nation state. There is a presumption that the law’s creation, adjudication and enforcement reflect the politics, values and culture of the society that inhabits a particular territory. This is especially true of criminal law, which emerges from a society’s history and norms, and then becomes embedded within it. The balance of crime control with due process, theories of punishment, and laws themselves varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The state bears the authority to prosecute and punish, and the state has the power to criminalise, except where individuals are penalised for specified international crimes.
