This chapter highlights the most significant features of investigation and trial procedure before international criminal courts. It assesses how fairness has been balanced with effectiveness in the unique and challenging context of conflict or post-conflict environments.
Chapter
20. Investigation and trial before international criminal courts
Antonio Cassese, Paola Gaeta, Laurel Baig, Mary Fan, Christopher Gosnell, and Alex Whiting
Chapter
1. The Main Legal Features of the International Community
Paola Gaeta, Jorge E. Viñuales, and Salvatore Zappalà
This chapter introduces the main features of the international legal system, including the nature of international legal subjects, the lack of a central authority (and the resulting decentralization of legal ‘functions’), collective responsibility, the need for most international rules to be translated into national legislation, the range of States’ freedom of action, the overriding role of effectiveness, traditional and individualistic trends and emerging community obligations and rights, and the coexistence of the old and new patterns. These features provide a general preview of the more detailed and technical discussion of international legal rules and institutions undertaken in subsequent chapters.
Chapter
3. The EU’s political institutions
Steve Peers
This chapter examines the possible tension between democracy and effectiveness in the context of the EU’s political institutions: the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, and the Commission. To this end, it examines in turn the composition, powers, and functioning of each of these institutions, comparing them to national systems and assessing their democratic accountability and the effectiveness of their functioning. It shows that the role of various EU institutions has evolved over time—in particular to strengthen the legislative role of the European Parliament, and that body’s control over the Commission.
Chapter
8. Remedies in National Courts
This chapter, which examines the issues concerning the responsibility for procedural rules and remedies between European Union (EU) and national law, discusses the relevant jurisprudence of the Court of Justice (CJ) and explains how it has developed the principles of equivalence and effectiveness, notably in specific fields such as sex discrimination law. It addresses the question of the extent to which EU law, while respecting the principle of national procedural autonomy, may nevertheless require the creation of new remedies in national legal systems for EU law rights—for instance as regards damages, time limits or interim relief.
Chapter
5. The police role, function and effects
Benjamin Bowling, Robert Reiner, and James Sheptycki
This chapter explores some of the political myths about police and policing by reviewing the research evidence on police practice. It considers the police role in theory and practice by focusing on three questions: what is the police role? what do the police actually do? and how well do they do it? It explores the original historical purpose of the police, the governmental authority on which it is based, the role of public opinion, why people call the police, the role and effectiveness of the police in crime control, and in broader social functions. The chapter concludes that the core function of the police is best analysed not in terms of any of their social functions but rather the special character of the means the police can bring to bear. Underlying the diversity of situations to which the police are called is the core capacity to use legitimate coercive force.
