The rise and fall of universal jurisdiction

For the last two decades most of the international human rights movement has advocated the exercise of universal jurisdiction—civil and criminal—by individual states over ‘gross human rights violations’ wherever committed and regardless of the nationality of the victim or perpetrator. The most spectacular criminal case was the arrest and detention in 1998 of former Chilean President (and dictator) Augusto Pinochet by British authorities at the request of Spain. His arrest and the adoption in the same year of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) were hailed as global civil society achievements.