ABSTRACT

The jurisdiction of international criminal courts and tribunals is set forth in their Statutes or Charters, as understood against the backdrop of general international law. It would generally seem preferable to keep these instruments clear and unambiguous to avoid litigation over a given tribunal’s jurisdiction from overwhelming it or impairing its ability to decide the cases before it. Unfortunately, however, many international criminal courts and tribunals have had to address complex questions relating to the exercise of their own jurisdiction, arising either from unanticipated factual scenarios, novel interpretations of the law or the insertion of ‘constructive ambiguities’ in their statutes resulting from compromises agreed during their negotiation. This chapter will briefly survey the basic principles underlying the jurisdiction of international criminal courts and tribunals, as well as some of the complexities applying these jurisdictional principles engenders in practice. I leave to other chapters in this book the question of criminal jurisdiction before national courts and tribunals, including the issue of universal (inter-state) jurisdiction.