Margaret Deguzman

• Temple University

This book chapter proposes a theory of proportionate sentencing for the International Criminal Court (ICC). It argues that the ICC should reject the focus on retribution advocated in much of the scholarship on international sentencing. Instead, the judges should craft an approach to proportionality that aims to promote the ICC’s core mission of pre...

This Essay, prepared for a symposium on “The International Criminal Court at Ten,” analyzes the ICC’s early jurisprudence on the gravity threshold for admissibility in Article 17 of the Rome Statute. It argues that the threshold, while useful in garnering support for ratification of the Rome Statute, now seems destined to play a minor role in deter...

As the International Criminal Court (ICC or Court) begins to sentence defendants for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, it must determine how much punishment is appropriate for these crimes. The initial sentencing decisions are especially important because they will serve as reference points for future sentences at the ICC and will...

This is an amicus curiae brief, submitted to the International Criminal Court Appeals Chamber with permission of that chamber, in the case of Prosecutor v Laurent Gbagbo. The brief raises concerns about unnecessarily stringent approaches to crimes against humanity, as was arguably shown in certain aspects of the Gbagbo Adjournment Decision. The bri...

Decisions about when to initiate investigations and which cases to prosecute are among the most difficult and contested choices international courts face. This chapter is part of a project aimed at developing general rules and principles of international criminal procedure. Its central aim therefore is to ascertain whether any general rules or prin...

International criminal law was born out of the Holocaust – the systematic extermination of millions of people by a government attempting to annihilate a race. It was the gravity of those crimes that provided the theoretical and political justifications for the first international criminal trials at Nuremberg. Yet today, the International Criminal C...

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has the mandate to "end impunity" for serious international crimes around the world but the budget to prosecute only a few cases per year. This high degree of selectivity represents one of the greatest threats to the Court’s legitimacy. Every selection decision the Court makes is scrutinized and many have been...

In light of serious resource constraints, international criminal courts are required to select a small number of crimes for prosecution, leaving others to national courts or, more often, impunity. In recent years, feminists have advocated that such courts give priority to prosecuting sex crimes even at the expense of other serious crimes, including...

The concept of crimes against humanity emerged in reaction to massive government-orchestrated crimes including, in particular, the holocaust. Unlike the other prototypically international crimes – war crimes and genocide – the proscription against crimes against humanity has not been enshrined in an international convention. Instead, the law of cri...

The concept of gravity or seriousness resides at the epicenter of the legal regime of the International Criminal Court. The Court’s founding document, the Rome Statute, declares as the institution's purpose to end impunity for “the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole" and restricts the Court's jurisdiction to su...

For almost three decades, justice has proven elusive for the victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide that killed approximately 1.7 million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979. Recently however, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) have undertaken criminal trials of a handful of the genocide's most senior leaders. The creation of the ECC...

As the international community set out to create a permanent international criminal court, one of its pivotal challenges was to identify the applicable law. The well-established principle that defendants must have prior notice of the content of criminal law (nullum crimen sine lege), along with a desire to curtail the discretion afforded internatio...

Human Rights Quarterly 22.2 (2000) 335-403 At the dawn of the new millennium, the international community is proclaiming a renewed and invigorated commitment to international criminal justice. More than ninety countries have signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and five states have already ratified the treaty. Two ad h...

This essay examines the philosophical justifications for giving priority to sex crime prosecutions at international courts. Despite the increased focus on prosecuting sex crimes in recent years, no effort has been made, either at the tribunals or in the scholarship, to develop such justifications. Those who prosecute and write about sex crimes gene...