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10 Crim. L.F. 1 (1999)

handle is hein.journals/crimlfm10 and id is 1 raw text is: KAI AMBOS* GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CRIMINAL LAW IN THE ROME STATUTE 1. INTRODUCTION More than fifty years after the Nuremberg trials, the international com- munity has established a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). The dramatic midnight vote in Rome on July 17, 1998, called by the United States of America, overwhelmingly approved the statute for the ICC by 120 votes to seven, with twenty-one abstentions.1 The vote was a historical breakthrough and the message sent out from Rome is an unequivocal stop to impunity for grave human rights violations. However, a closer look at the Rome Statute brings us quickly back to the world of complex legal technicalities and insufficiencies, a product of the spirit of compromise hanging over the diplomatic negotiations at the Food and Agriculture Organization building in Rome. The Rome Statute is not a dogmatically refined international model penal and pro- cedural code. It could not be. But it is an attempt to merge the criminal justice systems of more than 150 States into one legal instrument that was more or less acceptable to every delegation present in Rome. This applies to all parts of the Statute, but in particular to Part 3, which is entitled General Principles. For criminal lawyers, the general part is the centre of dogmatic reflections and the starting point for any criminal * Research fellow, Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law. Dr. jur., University of Munich 1992. The author was a member of the German delegation at the Rome Diplomatic Conference but only expresses his personal opinion in this article. 1 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted by the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Crim- inal Court on 17 July 17, 1998, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9 (1998), 37 I.L.M. 999 (1998), <http://www.un.org/icc>. See, for a general overview: Kai Ambos, Zur Rechtsgrundlage des neuen Internationalen Strafgerichtshofs, 111 ZEITSCHRIFT FUR DIE GESAMTE STRAFRECHTSWISSENSCHAFT-ZSTW 175 (1999); see also the special issue (4/1998) of the European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice (EUR. J. CRIME CR. L. CR. J.) and Triffterer (ed), Commentary (1999). rA Criminal Law Forum 10: 1-32, 1999. O © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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