Dothan: When Does Complementarity Improve Deterrence?

Shai Dothan (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem - Law) has posted When Does Complementarity Improve Deterrence? Here's the abstract:

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was created by the Rome Statute to prosecute and adjudicate international crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Pursuant to the Rome Statute, the ICC applies a jurisdictional rule known as the rule of complementarity. This rule commits the ICC not to prosecute crimes that are being prosecuted by a state that has concurrent jurisdiction. The ICC could have adopted a rule of primacy – such as that adopted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) – that would have allowed it to prosecute cases even if they were being tried in another jurisdiction. This paper explores the conditions under which the rule of complementarity better deters officers from violating the statute than the rule of primacy. It concludes that the jurisdictional rule that creates better deterrence depends on the type of states under the ICC's jurisdiction, that is whether there are more corrupt states or rule of law states, as well as on the probability that the ICC will use its scarce resources to prosecute particular officers.