Partant du constat de l’absence de littérature sur les processus de codification du “droit interaméricain de la drogue,” la présente étude ambitionne de combler cette lacune en vérifiant par ailleurs l’existence même de ce droit, essentiellement au moyen d’une analyse comparative des prescriptions du droit onusien de la drogue avec celles du droit en vigueur dans les Amériques. Ce faisant, l’auteur en arrive à la conclusion que le droit interaméricain de la drogue est le produit d’un jeu d’influence réciproque entre le droit onusien, les lois-modèles de la Commission interaméricaine de contrôle de l’abus des drogues (CICAD) et les droits nationaux. Ce jeu d’influence, par effet de renvoi, particulièrement entre les lois-modèles de la CICAD et les droits nationaux, traduit bien l’influence des conditions structurelles, métajuridiques et extrajuridiques dans la codification et l’institutionnalisation du droit interaméricain de la drogue.

The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) has described the preliminary examination as one of its “three core activities,” alongside investigating and prosecuting crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute). Honing in on this once-mysterious “core activity,” this article contributes to the recently expanding literature on preliminary examinations at the ICC by providing a much needed comprehensive picture of all preliminary examinations conducted to date. The twentieth anniversary of the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, provides a timely opportunity for this review as part of the broader effort to take stock of the ICC’s achievements, failures, and future. The article demonstrates that, despite not having full investigatory powers at the preliminary examination stage, the OTP is very active during this phase. It interacts with a wide range of domestic and international actors and makes decisions on important legal issues that go to the heart of the ICC’s work. Paying close attention to preliminary examinations is therefore critical to understanding the OTP’s work, to understanding which actors engage with, and seek to “use,” the ICC, and to understanding important debates about the ICC’s legitimacy.

This article deals with the Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. In particular it analyzes the legal issues arising from the jurisdiction of the court’s proposed International Criminal Law Section over corporations. After underlining the historic opportunity represented by this initiative, the author points out a number of challenges that will necessarily arise when the court begins to operate. These problems are mainly related to the fact that criminal law has developed around the criminal liability of natural persons. Overcoming these challenges will require rethinking how to apply many of the basic principles that traditional criminal law has, until now, taken for granted.

International criminal law, like all areas of law, must continue to evolve to reflect contemporary realities. This article demonstrates that the current subject matter jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court under the Rome Statute is very much an artefact of history, and it argues that the historical and reactive line that the statute draws between “core” international crimes and other serious international or transnational crimes is inadequate. In order to ensure that international criminal law continues to evolve in a reasoned and principled manner, states need to better articulate the criteria by which conduct is included within the category of “the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.” Using a primarily inductive approach, the article considers a number of such criteria that have been considered over the years. It concludes that, when assessed in the context of their systematic and organized perpetration, many other serious international and transnational crimes raise some of the same concerns that underpin the current core international crimes, suggesting that it may be time for the international community to consider redrawing the line.