Obstacles in the Way of an International Criminal Court

Abstract

The idea of a permanent international criminal court has been on the international agenda for much of this century. After World War I unsuccessful attempts were made to bring the German Emperor to trial before an international tribunal and, later, to try Turks responsible for the genocide of Armenians before a tribunal to be designated by the Allied Powers. In 1937, following the assassination in 1934 of King Alexander of Yugoslavia by Croatian nationalists in Marseilles, treaties were drafted to outlaw international terrorism and to provide for the trial of terrorists before an international tribunal, but states lost interest in this venture as war approached and no state ratified the treaty for an international criminal court and only one (India) ratified the treaty outlawing international terrorism. The establishment of the Nuremberg and Tokyo international military tribunals to try the principal leaders of the Nazi and Japanese regimes after World War II as a natural culmination of the pre-war debate over an international criminal court and set the scene for renewed attempts to create a permanent international criminal court.