Abstract
Extraterritorial jurisdiction over international crimes remains one of the most contentious areas of public international law. This controversy has resulted from international scholars' unwillingness to distinguish between core international crimes, i.e., atrocity crimes and treaty crimes. While the primary mode of establishing jurisdiction as regards the former remains territorial, the latter, on the other hand, essentially involves extraterritorial jurisdiction. Whereas the current scholarly debate remains focused on the legality and illegality of extraterritorial jurisdiction, scant attention has been given to the crystallization of rules of jurisdiction, keeping in view the unavoidability of extraterritorial jurisdiction for certain types of crimes. The perils involved in the ambiguity of regulations include an excess of jurisdiction or no jurisdiction at all, threatening to cause the failure of the international legal regime and impunity for perpetrators. As most treaty crimes imply border crossing as an essential element of criminal activity, the major problem in their prosecution relates to competing and conflicting jurisdictional claims. Needless to state, the intricate jurisdictional issues raised by treaty crimes would only be resolved through the proper application of international law. Although most transnational crimes have been subjected to comprehensive regimes of various multilateral Conventions, state parties to such Conventions remain free to interpret treaty provisions largely following their national preferences. Moreover, no consensus exists among states regarding applying various national and international law principles in interpreting treaties.
Published Version
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