![handle is hein.journals/crimlfm14 and id is 1 raw text is: MATTHIAS SCHUSTER*
THE ROME STATUTE AND THE CRIME OF AGGRESSION:
A GORDIAN KNOT IN SEARCH OF A SWORD
International law is quintessentially about achieving common legal
ground, something that is particularly true when it comes to questions
of international criminal justice. The Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court,1 achieved after years of negotiations, is the paradig-
matic illustration for such an accumulation of concessions and comprom-
ises. Although all States only partially succeeded in having their views
included, most of them were still able to find their ideas sufficiently
reflected in the provisions to result in a Statute that enjoys broad support2
and that in fact entered into force on 1 July 2002.3 However, the most
prominent and contentious problems, which could not be solved by general
consensus, were the issues surrounding the crime of aggression. With the
crime's inclusion in the Statute uncertain up to the end of the Rome nego-
tiations, it was agreed to disagree.4 The result was a codified impasse:
Article 5, paragraph 1 of the Statute lists aggression as one of the four core
crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court, but paragraph 2 of the same
provision stipulates that
[t]he Court shall exercise jurisdiction of the crime of aggression once a provision is adopted
in accordance with articles 121 and 123 defining the crime and setting out the conditions
under which the Court shall exercise jurisdiction with respect to the crime. Such a provision
shall be consistent with the relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.
Whereas some observers have claimed that aggression as the arch-
crime which most menaces international society needed to be included in
* Referendarius (Junior Lawyer), State of Berlin; First Law Degree, State of Saxony
(2000); LLM, University of Sussex (2001).
1 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, UN Doc. A/CONF.183/9 (the
Rome Statute).
2 Pursuant to article 126 of the Rome Statute, the Court was established as a result
of sixty States ratifying the treaty. As of 10 April 2003, there were 139 signatories and
eighty-nine ratifications.
3 M. Simons, Without Fanfare or Cases, International Court Sets Up, THE NEW YORK
TIMES, 1 July 2002, p. 8.
4 Grant M. Dawson, Defining Substantive Crimes Within the Subject Matter Jurisdic-
tion of the International Criminal Court: What Is the Crime of Aggression?, 19 N.Y.L.
SCH. J. INT'L & COMP. L. 413, 418 (2000).
LA Criminal Law Forum 14: 1-57, 2003.
O © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/crimlfm14&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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