This book approaches the question of whether or not the court procedure at the International Criminal Court (ICC) can be regarded as fair from two angles: First, does the ICC provide a fair trial according to the accepted standards of international human rights law? Secondly, is it substantively fair so as to establish the legitimacy of the court on a sound footing? Practitioners and academics are increasingly conscious of the need for an approach to evidence which spans civil law and common law traditions, national and international law. This is what this monograph does, in meticulous detail, for the law of confrontation and disclosure.

This book provides a comprehensive explanation of what the right to a fair trial means in practice under international law. Focus on factual scenarios that practitioners may, it brings together sources and cases that define the right to a fair trial in criminal proceedings.

With the acceptance of international criminal procedure as a self-sustaining discipline and as the tribunals established to try the most serious crimes in the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda have completed or are beginning to wind up their activities, the time is ripe for a critical evaluation of these international criminal tribunals and their legacy. By examining the due process standards embraced by the five contemporary international criminal tribunals, the author draws conclusions about how the right to a fair trial should be interpreted in international criminal law. This volume addresses key conceptual questions on fairness, including: should international criminal tribunals set the highest standards of fairness, or is it sufficient for their practice to be 'just fair enough'? To whom does the right to a fair trial attach, and can actors such as the prosecution and victims be accurately said to benefit from that right? Does fairness require the full realization of a number of guarantees owed to the accused under the statutory frameworks of international criminal tribunals, or should we instead be concerned with the fairness of the trial 'as a whole'? What is the interplay between domestic and international courts on questions of procedural fairness? What are the elements of fairness in international criminal proceedings? And what remedies are available for breaches of fair trial rights? Through an in-depth exploration of the right to a fair trial, the author concludes that international criminal tribunals have a role in setting the highest standards of due process protection in their procedures, and that in so doing, they can have a positive impact on domestic justice systems.

Contains the trial proceedings of the International Criminal Court, the ICTY and the ICTR in one single volume. This book covers the procedural and evidentiary aspects of the trials before the ICC from the beginning of an investigation until the time the convict has served the sentence and it includes ICTY and ICTR precedents.

ÔInternational criminal justice indeed is a crowded field. But this edited collection stands well above the crowd. And it does so with dignity. Through interdisciplinary analysis, the editors skillfully turn shibboleths into intrigues. Theirs is a kaleidoscopic project that scales a gamut of issues: from courtroom discipline, to gender, to the defense, to history. Through vivid deployment of unconventional methods, this edited collection unsettles conventional wisdom. It thereby pushes law and policy toward heartier horizons.Õ Ð Mark A. Drumbl, Washington and Lee University, School of Law, US International criminal justice as a discipline throws up numerous conceptual issues, engaging disciplines such as law, politics, history, sociology and psychology, to name but a few. This book addresses themes around international criminal justice from a mixture of traditional and more radical perspectives. While law, and in particular international law, is at the heart of much of the discussion around this topic, history, sociology and politics are invariably infused and, in some aspects of international criminal justice, are predominant elements. Fundamentally the exploration concerns questions of coherence and legitimacy, which are foundational to both the content and application of the discipline, and the book charts an illuminating path through these diverse perspectives. The contributions in this book come from some of the eminent scholars and practitioners in the area, and will provide some profound insight into and an enriched understanding of international criminal justice, helping to advance the field of study. This ambitious and necessary book will appeal to academics and students of international criminal law, international criminal justice, international law, transitional justice and comparative criminal law, as well as practitioners of international criminal law.

This work deals with the exclusion of illicitly obtained evidence at the International Criminal Court. At the level of domestic law, the so-called exclusionary rule has always been a very prominent topic. The reason for this is that the way a court of law deals with tainted evidence pertains to a key aspect of procedural fairness. It concerns the balancing of the right to a fair trial with the interest of society in effective law enforcement. At the international level, however, the subject has not yet been discussed in detail. The present research intends to fill this gap. It provides an overview of the approaches of a number of domestic legal systems as well as of the approaches of the UN ad hoc tribunals and the European Court of Human Rights and uses the different perspectives to develop a version of the exclusionary rule which fits the International Criminal Court. The book is highly recommended for practitioners and researchers in the field of international criminal law and especially the law of international criminal evidence. Petra Viebig is a Public Prosecutor at the Staatsanwaltschaft Hamburg, Germany.

In The Right to Be Present at Trial in International Criminal Law Caleb H. Wheeler analyses what it means for the accused to be present during international criminal trials and how that meaning has changed. This book also examines the impact that absence from trial can have on the fair trial rights of the accused and whether those rights can be upheld outside of the accused’s presence. Using primary and secondary sources, Caleb Wheeler has identified four different categories of absence and how each affects the right to be present. This permits a more nuanced understanding of how the right to be present is understood in international criminal law and how it may develop in the future.

Principles of Evidence in International Criminal Justice provides an overview of the procedure and practice concerning the admission and evaluation of evidence before the international criminal tribunals. The book is both descriptive and critical and its emphasis is on day-to-day practice, drawing on the experience of the Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone Tribunals. This book is an attempt to define and explain the core principles and rules that have developed at those ad hoc Tribunals; the rationale and origin of those rules; and to assess the suitability of those rules in the particular context of the International Criminal Court which is still at its early stages. The ICC differs in structure from the ad hoc Tribunals and approaches the legal issues it has to resolve differently from its predecessors. The ICC is however confronted with many of the same questions. The book examines the differences between the ad hoc Tribunals and the ICC and seeks to offer insights as to how and in which circumstances the principles established over years of practice at the ICTY, ICTR and SCSL may serve as guidance to the ICC practitioners of today and the future. The contributors represent a cross-section of the practicing international criminal bar, drawn from the ranks of the Bench, the Prosecution and the Defence and bringing with them different legal domestic cultures. Their mixed background underlines the recurring theme in this book which is the manner in which a legal culture has gradually taken shape in the international Tribunals, drawing on the various traditions and experiences of its participants.

This book examines the right to a fair trial in international criminal proceedings from a human rights perspective, drawing mainly from General Comments, Individual Communications to the Human Rights Committee and the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals and courts. The author shows the extent to which international and hybrid criminal courts, specifically ICTY and ICTR, uphold human rights standards as laid down in the ICCPR. Even though these ad hoc tribunals have been criticized for lengthy trials, they have generously granted accused individuals enormous privileges, such as the right to self-representation, which is not possible in the ECtHR. To reconcile this situation, the author proposes that the ad hoc tribunals could adopt the approach of the ECtHR with regards to length of proceedings, while the ECtHR can learn from the ad hoc tribunals with regards to self-representation.

"In The Right to Appeal in International Criminal Law Dražan Djukić describes appeal proceedings in international criminal law and evaluates them against human rights benchmarks. While international criminal courts and tribunals mainly comply with these benchmarks, they have fallen short in certain important areas. Despite their importance to the legal process, appeal proceedings tend to receive limited attention. On the basis of benchmarks arising from international human rights law, Dražan Djukić systematically assesses the law and practice concerning appeal proceedings in international criminal law"--