'Old and New' International Criminal Law

In Japan, few universities have established courses in international criminal law, and it is one of the subjects that can only be studied at Keio University. International criminal law has two aspects: international criminal law in a broad sense and international criminal law in a narrow sense. The former is the 'criminal law aspect of international law' (e.g., the prosecution and punishment of 'core crimes,' which are of concern to the entire international community), while the latter is an academic field that deals with the 'international aspect of domestic criminal law' (e.g., the territorial scope of criminal law, cooperation with foreign countries in criminal cases).

International criminal law in the broad sense addresses the difficult question of how to prosecute and punish those responsible for the most serious core crimes—the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. These include the Holocaust by Nazi Germany, Japan's wartime crimes and the subsequent Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials, the massacres in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda after the Cold War, and the so-called 'Islamic State' that is currently making headlines. At the International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002, trials are currently underway for incidents that occurred in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Darfur region of Sudan, and in 2014, the first guilty verdict was confirmed on appeal. In this context, Japan, which joined the ICC in 2007, has so far not shown much of a presence. In this class, we will also consider the contributions that Japan can make precisely because it experienced the Tokyo Trial after the war.

In international criminal law in the narrow sense, we will study a wide range of topics, using crimes encountered by Japanese people overseas and crimes committed by foreigners in Japan as subject matter. These topics range from the scope of application of criminal law to the extradition of criminals, investigative cooperation with foreign countries, and the transfer of sentenced persons to their home countries. With the accelerating pace of globalization, many problems have arisen that cannot be handled by the conventional criminal justice system. Prime examples include crimes using the internet and the flight of foreign suspects abroad. What kind of reforms should Japan's criminal justice system, which faces these problems, undergo? All participants in the class will brainstorm ideas together.