International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability – In the Court’s Shadow, Patryk I. Labuda, Oxford University Press, 2023, 368 pages, £110
Complementarity has emerged as a byword for international criminal law’s preoccupation with domestic accountability.… But the word complementarity, derived from the Rome Statute, designates not merely the ICC’s institutional design vis-à-vis states. More importantly, it has come to embody diverse assumptions, expectations, and beliefs about how international and domestic actors should interact with one another in the anti-impunity project. One especially prominent idea is that international tribunals exist not just to hold trials but also to cast a shadow over states and to serve as a ‘catalyst’ for the domestic rule of law. (p. 258)
Complementarity, positive complementarity, and to a lesser extent, court shadow or shadow of the court are words and phrases of malleable and nebulous substance. Their invocation inspires as much as they perplex. Injected into the lexicon of international criminal law practice and procedure, these words and phrases have become ubiquitous, if not indispensable, when considering the works of the International Criminal Tribunals (ICTs). Lately, positive complementarity – the notion that the International Criminal Court (ICC) should be engaging national jurisdictions in prosecutions of international crimes and encouraging states to prosecute cases domestically when possible (shifting enforcement of international criminal law from ICTs to domestic courts) – seems to be dominating at conferences and legal writings, often referenced in regards to the court’s shadow (a multi-definitional phase, ranging from positive affects to swords of Damocles).
When the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) were established by the United Nations Security Counsil (UNSC) with primacy as to who would be prosecuted, it was understood that once these courts ceased to operate, anti-impunity trials would have to continue through domestic courts. Of course, it was also understood that before cases under ICTY and ICTR jurisdiction could be transferred to or allowed to proceed in domestic courts, significant legal and judicial reforms would be required. Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability – In the Court’s Shadow”