This week we kick off our brand new feature called “A Closer Look” where we delve deeper into legal issues and the broader context in which those issues play out. For our first feature we look at the contentious issue of whether Palestine’s bid to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a legally valid one. To help us understand the legal issues we are grateful for this article by Luigi Prosperi, post-doctoral fellow at the Political Science Department of Sapienza University of Rome. He is also a member of the LUISS Guido Carli Research Center on International and European Organization and an editor of “Rivista OIDU” (www.rivistaoidu.net), which is the online journal of the Sapienza PhD Programme on “International legal order and human rights” (which he completed in 2013).
He was a Visiting Fellow at European University Institute of Florence from September to December 2014, working on a project on the prosecution of crimes against cultural properties.
He has been studying international criminal law since his PhD years at Sapienza (2009-2013). On 16 July 2013 he defended a thesis (in Italian) on “International criminal law as a combined system of centralized and diffused prosecution of international crimes”. We are delighted and humbled to have Luigi contribute to Progressive Lawyer and I know you will find this informative.
In addition to inflaming political debates, the recent Palestinian bid to join the International Criminal Court has turned the spotlight on one of the most controversial features of the International Criminal Court system: namely, the power of non-party States to accept the Court’s jurisdiction with respect to crimes committed on their territory or by their nationals.