General Principles of Criminal Responsibility

The structures of international criminal law are especially complex with respect to the general principles of criminal responsibility. Besides the principle of legality, the general principles that may be considered binding on both international and national criminal proceedings are apparently restricted to those regarding command responsibility, superior order defense, and functional immunity of state officials. Customary international law on other general principles is applicable only to international judicial forums. Furthermore, even at the international level, there is a difference that leads the International Criminal Court (ICC) to mainly apply its own statute as a conventional law and ad hoc international criminal tribunals to apply customary international law. The substance of respective applicable laws varies with regard to topics, such as the subjective elements of crimes, the distinction between principals and accessories, command responsibility, attempt, conspiracy, and grounds for excluding criminal responsibility, including intoxication and duress, which appear problematic from the perspective of a systematic understanding of international criminal law. In some cases, however, it is apparently necessary to reflect the difference in the characteristics of applicable laws in the very substance of general principles, as is the case with the principle of mistake of law.