Perpetrators and Accessories in International Criminal Law, - by Neha Jain (Hardcover)

About the Book

The author proposes doctrines of perpetration and secondary responsibility that reflect the role and function of high level participants in mass atrocity while situating them within the political and social climate which renders these crimes possible.

Book Synopsis

International criminal law lacks a coherent account of individual responsibility. This failure is due to the inability of international tribunals to capture the distinctive nature of individual responsibility for crimes that are collective by their very nature. Specifically, they have misunderstood the nature of the collective action or framework that makes these crimes possible, and for which liability may be attributed to intellectual authors, policy makers and leaders. In this book, the author draws on insights from comparative law and methodology to propose doctrines of perpetration and secondary responsibility that reflect the role and function of high-level participants in mass atrocity, while simultaneously situating them within the political and social climate which renders these crimes possible. This new doctrine is developed through a novel approach which combines and restructures divergent theoretical perspectives on attribution of responsibility in English and German domestic criminal law, as major representatives of the common law and civil law systems. At the same time, it analyses existing theories of responsibility in international criminal law and assesses whether there is any justification for their retention by international criminal tribunals.

Review Quotes

"This scholarly work is a classic of its kind... No pains have been spared to make this a truly definitive work on the law on the subject." --Frontline, September 19, 2014

"With its detailed assessment of the relevant international criminal law cases and doctrines and its careful mining of domestic law and theory (both English and German), the strengths of this book are those of traditional doctrinal legal scholarship: it is exhaustive, principled and directed towards a clear end, in this case, a more theorised approach to assigning individual responsibility for international crimes that are committed collectively." --Current Issues in Criminal Justice vol 26 no 3 March 2015

"Jain's book is invaluable... her work serves as an excellent companion for an introduction to the subject, both for the newly initiated as well as for the expert in international criminal law... Jain presents an abundance of information while venturing a critical approach that leads her to present her own theory. [The book] is infused with interesting and cautiously articulated ideas that invite us to think critically about its core concepts - perpetration, principal-accessory distinction, the basis for high-level perpetrator liability, and the peculiarities of international crimes that have to be accommodated in a truly international criminal law." --The Cambridge Law Journal

"Jain has written a wonderful book - articulate, clear, exhaustively researched, challenging, timely, and above all with great potential for practical importance. Thoroughly recommended." --The Law and Politics Book Review, 25(4)

"...a relevant piece of legal scholarship...a thought-provoking read for any practitioner of international criminal law." --Journal of International Criminal Justice

"...Jain's book is essential reading not just for scholars and students of international criminal justice, but for anyone who cares about how domestic criminal law - in any system - treats principals and accessories." --Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Online

About the Author

Neha Jain is an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. She has held research positions at Georgetown University Law Center, and at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany. Professor Jain completed her BCL and DPhil in law from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar and Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College. She served as a law clerk to former Chief Justice VN Khare of the Supreme Court of India and has interned with the Office of the Prosecutor at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and with the Legal and Treaties Division of India's Ministry of External Affairs.