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Part A Major Problems of International Criminal Justice, II Fundamentals of International Criminal Law, General Principles of International Criminal Law

Gerhard Werle

From: The Oxford Companion to International Criminal Justice

Edited By: Antonio Cassese (Editor-in-Chief)

From: Oxford Public International Law (http://opil.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved.date: 22 September 2023

In domestic legal systems, ‘general principles’ of criminal law are the rules that ‘cut across all offences’1—that are, in other words, relevant to all crimes. In the context of ICL, ‘general principles’ apply to all crimes that create individual criminal liability under international law. These core crimes include genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. In the history of ICL, the definition of these core crimes was the primary challenge. General principles were of only secondary importance in efforts to codify and apply ICL....
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