#friendly neighbourhood lawyer is here to scream into the void about international law

[thatfrenchacademic]

"International Criminal Court delivered Arrest Warrants for-"

Hello let me stop you right there, as of May 25th 2024 this ICC did not deliver any arrest warrant.

Friendly local lawyer breaking down what's happening because your local TV channel will not break down what is happening, and it's a bit too complicated to be tweet-sized. And if I read one more time "ICC ISSUES WARRANTS" or "ICC SEEKS WARRANT" I will actually start slapping people with the Rome Statute

And I am just giving a breakdown of the procedure, ok, this is not a politics blog, I am just a jurist always very mad at how bad communication about (international) law is online. Consider this your "ICC procedure 101" so you can tell your weird relative to shut up about things they don't understand and back it up with facts.

Here is the basic information you need to know:

The International Criminal Court is different from the International Court of Justice.

The International Criminal Court is a complex structure, but what matters right now is this: it has an Office of the Prosecutor, and then it has the Chambers: pre-trial Chambers, trial Chambers, Appeals chamber .

The International Criminal Court deals with non-state actors, ie people [as far as I know, it does not deal with organisations or non-flesh-and-bones-entities?], and handles entire "situations", ie it can end up charging and convicting both sides of a conflict.

It deals with crimes of atrocities, which include three categories (genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity).

Ok? Ok cool. So now about these arrest warrants. Broadly speaking, the decision procedure goes:

Office of the Prosecutor conducts the Preliminary Investigation

Office of the Prosecutor conducts investigation, which can include applying for Arrest Warrants for suspects.

Pre-trial Chamber decides whether to issue that Arrest Warrant or not.

Arrest Warrant is issues (or not).

Right now, we are at phase 2: The Office of the Prosecutor, with a panel of experts, delivered a report and an official application for Arrest Warrant for multiple officials/high-ranking decision-makers on both sides. THIS is what you are hearing about [because frankly the OTP took its sweet ass time before actually delivering them, may we one day know why. They might ave a good reason, they might have none].

The report in question is easy to read in that it is not full of jargon or legalese - it is plain English, so you can read it, but note that it does deal with very difficult topics, as tactfully as it can.

We now have to wait for the pre-trial chamber to decide whether to issue the warrants or not. Might take weeks. Might take months. Once that's done, procedure will continue. And the next step is NOT "trial" - there are still additional steps.

Being said that, it IS huge, on at least 39 different legal and political aspects, none of which I have the energy to unpack here, but yeah. This it is, this is my contribution to the state of knowledge on Tumblr.hell