Defenses in Contemporary International Criminal Law

Download or read book Defenses in Contemporary International Criminal Law written by Geert-Jan G. J. Knoops and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second Edition of "Defenses in Contemporary International Criminal Law" ventures farther into this uneasy territory than any previous work, offering a meticulous analysis of the case law in the post World War II Military Tribunals and the ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia, with particular attention to the defenses developed, their rationales, and their origins in various municipal systems. It analyzes the defense provisions in the charters and statutes underlying these tribunals and the new International Criminal Court, while examining the first judgment in this field rendered by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, on June 20, 2007. The conceptual reach of this work includes not only the defenses recognized in the field's jurisprudence and scholarship (superior orders, duress, self-defense, insanity, necessity, mistake of law and fact, immunity of States), but also presents a strong case for the incorporation of genetic and neurobiological data into the functioning of certain defenses. Procedural mechanisms to invoke these defenses are also addressed.