Volume I, s.3 Jurisdiction, 11 Jurisdiction Ratione Materiae, Ch.11.6 Cumulation of Offences
Susanne Walther
From: The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
Edited By: Professor Antonio Cassese, Professor Paola Gaeta, Mr John R.W.D. Jones
The subject of ‘cumulation of offences’ presents highly complex legal issues. This is because criminal justice doctrine operates with more than one notion of the term ‘the crime’. Reference to ‘the crime’ can, first, be meant in a historical or empirical sense. The reference then is to the criminal act, deed, or transaction, as empirical event (for instance, the ‘bank robbery’, the ‘raiding of village X’, ‘the attack on Y’, etc.). Second, ‘the crime’ can also be used in a legalistic or definitional sense; reference is then to a specific ‘crime on the books’, i.e....