The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law

In the past twenty years, international criminal law has become one of the main areas of international legal scholarship and practice. Most textbooks in the field describe the evolution of international criminal tribunals, the elements of the core international crimes, the applicable modes of liability and defences, and the role of states in prosecuting international crimes.

The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law, by contrast, takes a theoretically informed and refreshingly critical look at the most controversial issues in international criminal law, challenging prevailing practices, orthodoxies, and received wisdoms. Some of the contributions to the Handbook come from scholars within the field, but many come from outside of international criminal law, or indeed from outside law itself. The chapters are grounded in history, philosophy, and international relations. The result is a Handbook that expands the discipline and should fundamentally alter how international criminal law is understood.

Kevin Jon Heller, Professor of International Law & Security, University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Military Studies, Darryl Robinson, Professor, Queen’s University Faculty of Law (Canada), Frédéric Mégret, Professor of Law and the Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, McGill University, Sarah MH Nouwen, Professor of Public International Law, the European University Institute, Jens David Ohlin, Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

Jens David Ohlin is Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law and Cornell Law School. Trained as both a philosopher and a lawyer, his research has tackled conspiracy and other doctrines penalizing collective criminal action, especially before international tribunals, but also the philosophy of international law, theories of rationality, and chivalry in warfare. More recently, he has focused on new battlefield technology, including cyber-attacks, drones, autonomous weapons, and modes of statecraft below the threshold of armed conflict, including disinformation and election interference. Dean Ohlin’s current book project, The Sovereign Other, is a work of political and legal philosophy that explores the relationship between the domestic and international social contracts. It reverses the traditional assumption that the social contract between societies should be understood by analogy to individuals within a society.

Sarah Nouwen is Professor of Public International Law at the European University Institute and at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Complementarity in the Line of Fire: The Catalysing Effect of the International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan (Cambridge University Press, 2013), an empirical study into the effects of the complementarity principle in the Rome Statute on the legal systems in Uganda and Sudan, and several other publications on international law, for which she won a Philip Leverhulme Prize and the Leiden Journal of International Law Prize for the best article published in 2013-2015. She has advised the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department for International Development and several NGOs. She also assisted an ICC judge as a Visiting Professional. In 2010-2011 she was seconded as Senior Legal Advisor to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel on Sudan.

Kevin Jon Heller is currently Professor of International Law & Security at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Military Studies, part of the Department of Political Science. He holds a PhD in law from Leiden University and a JD with distinction from Stanford Law School. His books include The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2011); Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories (Oxford University Press, 2021) (edited with Ingo Venzke); The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials (Oxford University Press, 2013) (edited with Gerry Simpson); and The Handbook of Comparative Criminal Law (Stanford University Press, 2011) (edited with Markus Dubber). He currently serves as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the ICC on War Crimes.

Frédéric Mégret is a Professor of Law and the Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law at McGill University. He holds an LLB from King’s College London, a DEA from the Université de Paris I, and a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), as well as a diploma from Sciences Po Paris where he graduated ＂avec les félicitations du jury.＂ He worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross, was a member of the French delegation at the Rome Conference on the International Criminal Court, and advised the Liberian government on a procedure to vet its armed forces for human rights violations. He is the author of ＂Le tribunal pénal international pour le Rwanda＂, and is co-editor with Philip Alston of the forthcoming second edition of The United Nations and Human Rights (OUP).

Darryl Robinson is Professor at Queen’s University Faculty of Law (Canada). He was a Hauser Scholar at New York University School of Law and a Gold Medallist at the Western University Faculty of Law. After clerking at the Supreme Court of Canada, he served as an international lawyer at Foreign Affairs Canada (1997-2004) and at the International Criminal Court (2004-2006). His research focuses on refining rules for a fair, humanistic, and inclusive system of international justice. He is a co-author of Introduction to International Criminal Law and Procedure (Cambridge University Press, 2024), and was the 2013-14 recipient of the Antonio Cassese Prize for International Criminal Legal Studies.