International criminal law is a body of international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetration. Principally, it deals with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity as well as the War of aggression. This article also discusses crimes against international law, which may not be part of the body of international criminal law.
"Classical" international law governs the relationships, rights, and responsibilities of states. Criminal law generally deals with prohibitions addressed to individuals, and penal sanctions for violation of those prohibition imposed by individual states. International criminal law comprises elements of both in that although its sources are those of international law, its consequences are penal sanctions imposed on individuals.
Read more about International Criminal Law: History, Sources of International Criminal Law, The Importance of Prosecuting International Crimes, Institutions of International Criminal Law
Famous quotes containing the words criminal and/or law:
“Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There ought to be a law against necessity.”
—E.Y. Harburg (1898–1981)