Abstract
One of the unique challenges that the International Criminal Court's (ICC's) Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) faces is deciding when and where to launch investigations. It is a task that other international prosecutors have not confronted. Their investigative “situations” were selected in advance, leaving those prosecutors free to focus on the myriad other challenges any international justice enterprise faces. The ICC prosecutor's ability to define her own investigative situations (within the limits of jurisdiction) is both a boon and a burden. On the one hand, it accords the OTP the freedom to select the situations it deems most serious and worthy of international attention. Yet this discretion can also generate intense strain for the prosecutor of a still novel and fragile institution.
Highlights
One of the unique challenges that the International Criminal Court’s (ICC’s) Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) faces is deciding when and where to launch investigations
It is a task that other international prosecutors have not confronted. Their investigative “situations” were selected in advance, leaving those prosecutors free to focus on the myriad other challenges any international justice enterprise faces
The Rome Statute provides very little guidance on this critical process; it merely gives the OTP the responsibility for “receiving referrals and any substantiated information on crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court, for examining them and for conducting investigations and prosecutions before the Court.”[1]. Article 53 of the Statute lays out the requirements for initiating an investigation, but the Statute contains no guidance on how long the preliminary examination process should last or the specific procedures the prosecutor should follow during that phase
Summary
One of the unique challenges that the International Criminal Court’s (ICC’s) Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) faces is deciding when and where to launch investigations. It is a task that other international prosecutors have not confronted Their investigative “situations” were selected in advance, leaving those prosecutors free to focus on the myriad other challenges any international justice enterprise faces. It accords the OTP the freedom to select the situations it deems most serious and worthy of international attention. This discretion can generate intense strain for the prosecutor of a still novel and fragile institution. This essay considers the merits of instituting a timetable for the completion of preliminary examinations and argues that, on balance, the reduced flexibility and other disadvantages associated with a timetable outweigh the advantages
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