The International Law of General Parts: A Reply to Neil Boister

Abstract Neil Boister’s ‘The “General Part” of Transnational Criminal Law’ illustrates in great detail that crime suppression conventions touch on matters often belonging to a domestic criminal law’s general part. This reply argues that, in so doing, they do not establish a ‘general part of transnational criminal law’ analogous to the general parts of domestic criminal law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. While the latter general parts define the laws applicable to individuals within criminal jurisdictions, crime suppression conventions are binding between states. Thus, either ‘transnational criminal law’ has no general part or its general part must be understood in other terms as part of the international law governing states’ authority to prescribe criminal responsibility – an ‘international law of general parts’. Only by analysing suppression conventions systemically within this international law of general parts can we comprehensively account for and appraise the limits that international law places, or fails to place, on states’ authority to ascribe criminal responsibility pursuant to transnational criminal law.