The International Criminal Trial Project [Research work in progress]

The debate surrounding the establishment of the International Criminal Court provides a critical example of the conflation of political imperative and criminal justice. In addition, it keenly identifies the manner in which the criminal trial (and its procedures) are viewed by the "international community" as crucial to the resolution of global conflict. The political push for an international criminal law, and its institutions, recently has relied on the connection between the image of a "just" international military intervention, and the necessity to punish "crimes" which either justified that intervention or were perpetrated by those opposed to it. At the conclusion of the military context, the resolution of these "crimes" is transferred into the court-room and the trial. Further, the trial is perhaps a slightly less contentious domain where the two principal procedural styles confront one another. The same could not be said, for instance, of the pre-trial phase.Colleagues associated with the Centre for Legal Research (Nottingham Law School) have embarked on a major research project which will comparatively analyse the trial process in civil and common law legal styles, and generate wider reflections on international criminal procedure.