Abstract

This chapter first discusses four categories of international criminal law, namely international aspects of national criminal law, international criminal law stricto sensu, suppression conventions/transnational criminal law, and international standards for criminal justice. It then explains some crosscutting issues that are in the forefront of both historical and contemporary discussions in the area, organizing the material under the rubric of jurisdiction, paying particular attention to how this plays out in a number of suppression conventions. The appropriateness of domestic court jurisdiction is a fundamental issue in relation to most of the subject matter of the first three of the categories of international criminal law and to significant instruments developed in the fourth. The chapter also introduces a recent international criminal treaty, namely 2010 Beijing Convention on the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Relating to International Civil Aviation, that is regarded as the state of the art.