Carsten Stahn (ed.),The Law and Practice of the International Criminal Court

Abstract

The first decade of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has passed, and increasingly, there is the sense that ‘the time of experiments is over’. 1 Assessments of both the Court, and more broadly, the international criminal justice project, are achievable. More significantly, such assessments are now able to rest upon discernable facts regarding the work and operations of the Court — as well as invoking the ‘faith’ that has traditionally galvanized international criminal justice. 2 In The Law and Practice of the International Criminal Court , editor Carsten Stahn has compiled 50 substantive chapters. Each chapter in this volume is impressive. The book provides an important contribution to the discourse around how the ICC can be understood and assessed after its first decade. The book is structured into six parts. The first part examines the ‘Context, Challenges, and Constraints’ of the ICC. Here, authors conduct analysis on questions of finances and resources, relationships to other institutions and the particular challenges faced by the ICC when operating within a political world. Part Two, entitled ‘The Relationship to Domestic Jurisdictions’, focuses on admissibility challenges, immunities, the relationship of the Court to non-state parties, self-referrals and ad hoc declarations of acceptance of jurisdiction. This is a rich section of the book, with extensive material on various aspects of how the ICC exercises its jurisdiction.