The system of international criminal justice was established in response to gross human rights violations committed during World War II. Despite its development over the past seven decades, challenges and critiques remain unresolved or have subsequently emerged, particularly in the context of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Key issues include amnesties, immunities, controversial acquittals, non-cooperation, interpretative fragmentation, and cultural clashes. Criticism emerged as a rea...

AI systems have the capacity to act in a way that can generally be considered as ‘criminal’ by society. Yet, it can be argued that they lack (criminal) agency – and the feeling of it. In the future, however, humans might develop expectations of norm-conforming behavior from machines. Criminal law might not be the right answer for AI-related harm, even though holding AI systems directly liable could be useful – to a certain extent. This book explores the issue of criminal responsibilit...

The subject of "international extradition" is not independently taught in legal education programs around the world, and still extradition remains today the most significant form of mutual assistance in criminal matters between States. This book provides a concise and clear description of extradition law and procedure based on a number of key principles and concepts (double criminality, rule of speciality, assurances) drawn from domestic extradition statutes, bilateral and multilateral treati...

Restorative justice is a way of doing justice in which the focus is on restoring the damage caused by a crime. This involves not only restoring mate rial and immaterial damage, but also restoring relational and moral damage. This is best achieved through processes that enable all stakeholders to engage in a dialogue and reach agreements on restora tion. This could include victim-offender-mediation as well as conference models that also involve the community.

In his inaugural address, Jacques ...

This book offers insight into the development of the EU in the areas of justice, home affairs and security, embedded in a broader international context. In addition to the main part, dedicated to the EU, the book features chapters on cooperation in the areas concerned at Benelux, Schengen, Council of Europe, NATO, OSCE, G7/G20, OECD and UN levels.The chapter structure is identical for all cooperation levels addressed, discussing their actual policies after sketching their historical developme...

Criminal law occupies a central role in the “prism” of human rights, given the relevant impact of trial and punishment on the personal sphere of individuals, which may be instrumentalised in the name of security claims for political purposes. It is no coincidence that during the Age of Enlightenment the main fundamental guarantees of criminal law were enshrined in human rights declarations, with an approach now widely accepted at an international level. In fact, the “dialogue” between...

Catastrophes used to be regarded as Acts of God, but nowadays tend to be blamed as Acts of Man. Although human error is a cause in the majority of accidents, it is seldomly the sole cause. Major accidents are usually the result of several errors made at different moments by different people that coincide in an extraordinary way.

Errors are common and inevitable. Humans make them regularly. But, when made in interaction with devices that can "crash, sink, burn, or explode," errors can have cat...

Until the end of the 1990s, EU integration in the area of criminal law centred primarily around the regional deepening of traditional judicial cooperation in criminal matters and the development of law enforcement cooperation (including the setting up of Europol as a support agency). By the end of the 1990s respectively 2000s, the EU also gained (limited) supranational competence in the areas of substantive respectively procedural criminal law. Both judicial and law enforcement cooperation we...

In many fields, enforcement of EU policies is performed by the Member States. In principle, Member States are free to decide how and by which means they enforce such policies, albeit under the observance of EU legal principles and harmonised rules. While differences between Member States are inevitable, especially at the interface of criminal and administrative enforcement, they should not create legal obstacles to effective and rule of law-based enforcement in cross-border cases. In his diss...