Image credit: UN Photo/Milton Grant (“Committee Approves Draft Definition of Aggression”: Members of the Special Committee photographed as they assembled behind the presiding table, April 12, 1974, UN, New York)
Working Papers Workshop: The Crime of Aggression
The Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict invites faculty, students, staff, and other interested members of the community to engage in a workshop on two working papers that seek to examine certain aspects of the crime of aggression under international law.
Time and Location
Friday, October 18, 2019 from 10:00 AM to 11:50 AM in WCC 3016 on the HLS campus.
Light refreshments will be provided.
The event will be moderated by Dustin A. Lewis, Senior Researcher, Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict.
Abstracts
Please find draft abstracts of each paper below. To request the papers before the workshop, please send an email to pilac@law.harvard.edu.
Author: Nikola Hajdin, Visiting Researcher at the Institute for Global Law and Policy at the Harvard Law School and Doctoral Candidate at the Faculty of Law at Stockholm University
Title: Material Elements of the Crime of Aggression
Abstract: To make a claim on individual criminal responsibility, the court has to make objective and subjective links between the individual and the crime. This article studies material elements of the crime of aggression (conduct, consequence and circumstance) and suggests a reading that solves much of the conceptual and practical issues regarding criminal responsibility. Its main contribution is the metaphysical distinction between the act of use of violence and the act of aggression, both subsumed under the state/collective act. The former is a consequence element and therefore is to be understood in its naturalistic meaning—a perceivable result of one’s action or omission. The latter is a circumstance that classifies the conduct as being illegal. These findings are crucial for the system of attribution of criminal responsibility.
Author: Dr. Chiara Redaelli, Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Law School and Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights
Title: The Human Dimension of the Crime of Aggression
Abstract: The aim of this article is to investigate the effects of the humanization of international law on the crime of aggression. In its traditional understanding, aggression is ‘the supreme international crime’ aimed at protecting sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. In the aftermath of the World War II, the humanization of international law has brought to the fore genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. As the focus has shifted to crimes directed at protecting human beings, the crime of aggression has gradually lost its central role and has lived in a legal limbo. Nevertheless, it has not remained immune from a humanitarian sensitivity that has pervaded international criminal law. Ultimately, this article will demonstrate that human rights, more than the maintenance of peace per se, have informed the crime of aggression. Furthermore, this work will propound that the crime of aggression has shifted from a crime against negative peace, i.e. absence of war, to a crime against positive peace, a notion that encompasses the protection of fundamental human rights.