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Volume I, s.4 General Principles of International Criminal Law, 23 Mental Elements–Mistake of Fact and Mistake of Law

Albin Eser

From: The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Edited By: Professor Antonio Cassese, Professor Paola Gaeta, Mr John R.W.D. Jones

From: Oxford Public International Law (http://opil.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved.date: 02 June 2023

Subject(s):
Mens rea — International criminal law, victims — Individual criminal responsibility — War crimes — Armed conflict, international
The Rome Statute’s Article 30 on ‘Mental element’ and Article 32 on ‘Mistake of fact or mistake of law’, if read together as their substantive interrelations necessitate,1 create an ambivalent impression.On the one hand, it cannot be stressed enough that the Rome Statute explicitly proclaims basic postulates of culpability by requiring a certain state of mind and also by recognizing that responsibility may be excluded by certain misperceptions of the perpetrator. Thus, the Rome Statute not only removes itself from older notions of ‘result liability’ which punished...
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