It’s all happening in The Hague tomorrow. In addition to seeing what Nice/Dixon have to say for themselves, the Appeals Chamber will render its decision on DRC warlord, Germain Katanga’s appeal against Trial Chamber II’s decision that his case should indeed be heard by the ICC.
When the Trial Chamber II’s decision was handed down, I felt that the result was correct, but I was concerned about dicta in the decision that potentially begins to shift complementarity from being a system that encourages states to put the resources into improving their domestic legal systems, to a system that discourages such investment by essentially saying, you can outsource to the ICC whenever you feel like it. Consequently my hope for tomorrow is that the Appeals Chamber will uphold the Trial Chamber’s decision, but provide some language to distance the court from any notion that the ICC can be used to outsource domestic justice, rather than incentivize it.
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