The Law of Command Responsibility

Guénaël Mettraux is a former legal assistant in the Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia ('ICTY'). He has appeared as counsel before the ICTY on behalf of General Sefer Halilovic, first commander of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ljube Boskoski, former Minister of Interior of the Republic of Macedonia. He is the author of International Crimes and the ad hoc Tribunals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) and Perspectives on the Nuremberg Trial (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

• PART I INTRODUCTION ; 1. The Evolution of the Law of Command Responsibility and the Principle of Legality ; 2. The Resurgence of International Criminal Justice and the Rebirth of Command Responsibility ; 3. Command Responsibility under Customary International Law and the Statute of the International Criminal Court ; PART II NATURE AND SCOPE OF APPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY ; 4. Command Responsibility as a Sui Generis form of Liability for Omission ; 5. Scope of Application of the Doctrine of Command Responsibility-International and Internal Conflicts as well as Peacetime? ; 6. Military Commanders, Civilian leaders, and Other Superiors, wthether De Jure or De Facto ; PART III ELEMENTS OF COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY AND UNDERLYING OFFENCES ; 7. General Remarks ; 8. Underlying Offences ; 9. A Superior-Subordinate Relationship between the Accused and Those Who Committed the Underlying Offences ; 10. A Culpable State of Mind ; 11. Breach of a Duty and Consequential Failure to Prevent or to Punish Crimes of Subordinates ; PART IV CONCLUSION ; 12. Concluding Remarks: A Workable Standard of Liability for Superiors ; ANNEX: RELEVANT PROVISIONS ; BIBLIOGRAPHY ; INDEX

...the author does offer very useful practical guidelines which will be most helpful for any lawyer working on such cases, as, for example, his collection of indicia when determining if the commander possessed the necessary effective control or the required state of mind.