The Institution of Liability in Cases of Subsidiary Jurisdiction before International Criminal Justice Bodies in Historical Perspective

The article traces the emergence and progressive refinement of what the author terms the subsidiary jurisdiction of international criminal courts: that is, their authority over matters which do not fall within the canonical catalogue of international crimes, yet are indispensable for safeguarding the proper functioning and procedural integrity of international criminal justice itself. It follows this institution from its tentative prefiguration in nineteenth‑ and early twentieth‑century projects of international criminal tribunals, through the jurisprudence of the post‑war military courts and subsequent ad hoc tribunals, to its eventual codification in Article 70 of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Methodologically, the study combines a historical‑legal approach – designed to reconstruct the chronological unfolding of the institution – with formal and comparative legal analysis of constitutive instruments, rules of procedure and case law of the relevant international bodies. Its originality lies in treating the development of jurisdiction over offences against the administration of international criminal justice not as a mere by‑product of the broader evolution of international criminal jurisdiction, but as an autonomous, structurally coherent historical‑legal process. By reconstructing the principal stages of this process and identifying the persistent patterns that emerge from them, the article suggests that the relevant norms have begun to transcend the confines of conventional treaty‑making, contributing to the crystallisation of a customary rule of international law requiring both states and international courts to respond to attacks upon the administration of international criminal justice.