Foreword

Abstract

With this issue, the Journal is inaugurating a new section that will run up to three times each year. The section will collect informative and critical commentaries on recent developments in national case law and legislation in the field of international criminal justice, broadly defined. This includes domestic prosecutions of international crimes, ICC implementing legislation, laws translating definitions of international crimes into domestic law or creating courts mandated to investigate and prosecute serious human rights violations, and other issues of interest to practitioners and scholars in this field. Each edition of the special section will consist of up to five commentaries on new national cases (edited by Nehal Bhuta), or up to five surveys of legislation (edited by Volker Nerlich), or indeed a combination of the two. The decision to run such a section on a regular basis reflects the accelerating pace and deepening intensity of national developments directly connected to international criminal law. The ‘domestication’ of international criminal law is clearly a trend that seems unstoppable, and we can now look regularly to national developments for practice and jurisprudence that will inform our understanding of international criminal law. By drawing on analysis and critical commentary from scholars from around the world, we hope to make these developments accessible to a much wider audience and to contribute to the ongoing cross-fertilization of legal thought in international criminal law.