Transnational Measures against the Impunity of International Crimes

In honour and memory of Bert Swart, the author enquires into the role of criminal law as ultima ratio in reaction to a state’s lawless past. Based on results and insights gained from a comparative project of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law entitled ‘Criminal Law in Reaction to State Crime’, the author argues that certain requirements must be fulfilled before criminal law acts as an efficient instrument for sanctioning and preventing massive human rights violations. However, purely national approaches to coping with international crimes are deficient. They must be reinforced and complemented at the inter- and supranational level. Although these inter- and supranational legal and institutional measures restrict national sovereignty the author is optimistic that these ‘utopian’ demands and expectations will ultimately be successful in the fight against impunity of state supported and other international crimes

Criminal law · Criminology · Honour · Human rights · Impunity · International law · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · State (computer science · International Law and Human Rights · Torture, Ethics, and Law · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses · Law