Admissibility of a case before the International Criminal Court

General information

The research will aim at a detailed analysis of the conditions that determine the admissibility of a case before the International Criminal Court (ICC). The grounds for admissibility of a case before the ICC are set out in Article 17 of the Rome Statute of the ICC. However, their specific elements are not precisely defined in the Statute. In the literature on the subject, attempts have been made to reconstruct the objectives that guided the drafters of the Statute, and numerous commentaries on the document have been written. The ICC, which was established in 2002, although it has not had much opportunity to define its jurisdiction so far, has adopted, in those cases in which it has dealt with the admissibility of a case, a position different from that formulated by both the creators of the ICC Statute and international law scholars. This discrepancy between practice and doctrine and drafting work requires a comprehensive analysis. Thus, the purpose of the study will be to reconstruct the prerequisites for the admissibility of a case based on ICC jurisprudence, while critically analysing other sources on the origins and activities of the Court.