Jurisdictional Arrangements and International Criminal Procedure

Abstract

As preparation for a chapter in a book on international criminal procedural law, this working paper analyses the jurisdictional arrangements between international criminal tribunals and domestic courts. Since ‘exclusive’, ‘concurrent’, ‘primary’ and ‘complementary’ jurisdiction do not exist in the abstract, it reviews the relevant provisions and the case law of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the International Criminal Court and the so-called ‘mixed tribunals’. On the basis of this analysis the conclusion suggests some hypotheses on the potential of various jurisdictional arrangements to serve as a conduit for channelling rules of criminal procedure to national jurisdictions. They could do so by providing circumstances in which the international tribunal may compel a state to defer to its jurisdiction, may exercise its jurisdiction and may refer proceedings to national jurisdictions that depend on particular features of the domestic justice system.