A Patchwork of Norms: A Commentary on the 1996 Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind

Abstract

The history of the Draft Code reveals an important fact, namely that the task of drafting it was commissioned by the General Assembly before many of the normative sources on which it would rely had come into being. This posed a fundamental problem for the drafters of the Code. If the Code departed from the texts of these instruments, then it might create contradictions in the law and sow the seeds of confusion. But if it merely reproduced those texts verbatim, then it would be otiose. How then was the Draft Code to coexist alongside these instruments and what use was it to make of them?