Together again? Customary law and control over the crime

This article considers the early history of ‘‘control over the crime’’ in international legal proceedings and commentary. Despite criticism of the International Criminal Court’s reliance on certain domestic sources, the theory is essentially an orthodox reflection of how individual responsibility was dealt with at Nuremberg. In identifying the theory’s precursors in the same body of early sources as the doctrine of joint criminal enterprise developed by tribunals applying customary law, it is concluded that control over the crime is likewise a refinement of established principles, and an appropriate basis for the International Criminal Court to construe Article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015.