The Definition of International Crime

Abstract

During the first decades of the twentieth century, legal scholars did not take a conceptual approach to the term ‘international crime’. The Second Protocol to the Geneva Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes of 2 October 1924 constitutes a key example of this trend: it defined aggressive war as a war crime without elaborating on what exactly the term “war crime” means. Moreover, the fact that even during the Nuremberg trials a definition of the term ‘international crime’ was not introduced speaks for itself. The first definition was eventually introduced in the case of United States of America v. Wilhelm List, et. al. (broadly known as the Hostages Trial), where the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg defined the term for the first time in contemporary international case law: “An international crime is such an act universally recognised as criminal, which is considered a grave matter of international concern and for some valid reason cannot be left within the exclusive jurisdiction of the State that would have control over it under ordinary circumstances.” After analysing the contemporary views of various scholars and focusing particularly on Antonio Cassese and M. Cherif Bassiouni’s work, the present chapter proposes a novel definition of the term ‘international crime’. The criteria used for the proposed new definition of international crime can also have a practical significance since they could potentially be applied in the future in order to verify whether a crime is international or not, and consequently whether it could fall within the purview of an international criminal justice institution.