Part A Major Problems of International Criminal Justice, III The Interplay of International Criminal Law and Other Bodies of Law, The Influence of the Common Law and Civil Law Traditions on International Criminal Law

In ICL, as expressed in the work of the Nuremberg Tribunals, the ad hoc Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, and in the Rome Statute establishing the ICC, we encounter a mixture of common law and civil law influences. Understanding and distinguishing the sources of this influence, however, requires some subtlety. When asked to pinpoint the difference between the common law and civil law, lawyers tend to appeal rather to superficial considerations, such as the influence of code in the civil law and the dominance of case law in the common law systems....