Mistake of Law Excusing Perpetrators of International Crimes
With a Foreword by Thomas Weigend, Professor of Criminal Law and Director of the Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, University of Cologne, GermanyWhen a perpetrator of an international crime argues in his defence that he did not realise
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Annemieke van Verseveld
Mistake of Law Excusing Perpetrators of International Crimes
123
Annemieke van Verseveld Criminal Law Department University of Amsterdam Amsterdam The Netherlands
ISBN 978-90-6704-866-8 DOI 10.1007/978-90-6704-867-5
ISBN 978-90-6704-867-5
(eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012940540 Ó T.M.C. ASSER
PRESS,
The Hague, The Netherlands, and the author(s) 2012
Published by T.M.C. ASSER PRESS, The Hague, The Netherlands www.asserpress.nl Produced and distributed for T.M.C. ASSER PRESS by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Ignoring it doesn’t work, nor does denouncing it, and there is no disavowing it, never mind denying it. The stain is inescapable and irreversible, and it is ours, and if we have any hope of containing it and living it down it can only come from seeing it whole.1 Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris
1
Gourevitch and Morris 2008, p. 160.
Preface
Why devote a voluminous book to the issue of mistake of law in international criminal law? Would it not appear frivolous for a person accused, for example, of crimes against humanity to claim that he did not know that what he did was against the law? And even if he was in fact mistaken, why should the law care as long as the perpetrator was aware of what he was doing? Annemieke van Verseveld brilliantly lays to rest such skeptical queries about the need for her study. In this book, she shows that it is not only worthwhile but even urgently necessary to reflect on mistakes of law. She demonstrates the relevance of her inquiry by showing, in Chap. 6, a host of areas of international criminal law where the applicable law is far from clear. And, based on a comprehensive analysis of four national legal systems (USA, England, Germany, and France) as well as of international criminal law, the author shows that the law in regard to mistakes of law is presently in disarray and lacks a clear direction. Annemieke van Verseveld’s concise but thorough treatment of the topic, therefore, is timely and useful. Any practitioner who deals with international criminal law cases should read this book. But that is not all. The issue of how the law should react to a defendant’s claim that he was not aware of the norm he violated raises fundamental questions about the purpose and
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