An International Terrorism Court in nuce in the Age of International Adjudication

Abstract

After characterizing the different dimensions of an increasing focus on terrorism in international law and the move towards international adjudicative mechanisms as defining features of the international legal zeitgeist in the post-cold war era, the main technical and political difficulties involved in bringing transnational terrorism under the jurisdictional scope of the International Criminal Court are assessed. An overview of the history and the precedential value of the 1937 Conventions on the Punishment and Prevention of Terrorism, and the Creation of an International Criminal Court, is followed by an appraisal of a contemporary blueprint for the establishment of a permanent international terrorism court by a Resolution of the Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the UN Chapter. In an age of international adjudication, the present international volatility, fueled by the on-going series of ISIS-inspired suicide terrorist attacks, may well turn out to be what 'historical institutionalism' terms a ‘critical juncture’ for the creation of new international adjudicative mechanisms for dealing with transnational terrorist offences.