The Principle of Legality in International and Comparative Criminal Law

by Kenneth S. Gallant

Overview

This book fills a major gap in the scholarly literature concerning international criminal law, comparative criminal law, and human rights law. The principle of legality (non-retroactivity of crimes and punishments and related doctrines) is fundamental to criminal law and human rights law. Yet this is the first book-length study of the status of legality in international law – in international criminal law, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law. This is also the first book to survey legality/non-retroactivity in all national constitutions, developing the patterns of implementation of legality in the various legal systems (e.g., Common Law, Civil Law, Islamic Law, Asian Law) around the world. This is a necessary book for any scholar, practitioner, and library in the area of international, criminal, comparative, human rights, or international humanitarian law.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521187602
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/23/2010
Series:	Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law , #65
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	632
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Professor Gallant is a Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. His previous positions include professor at the University of Idaho, prosecutor with the District Attorney of Philadelphia, and clerk for the Hon. Louis H. Pollak of the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the National Law School of India University and Tribhuvan University in Nepal. He was elected as the first Representative of Counsel on the Advisory Committee on Legal Texts of the International Criminal Court, was a founding member of the International Criminal Bar, and was on its first governing Council.

Table of Contents

1. Legality in criminal law, its purposes, and its competitors; 2. A partial history to World War II; 3. Nuremberg, Tokyo, and other post-war cases; 4. Modern development of international human rights law: practice involving multilateral treaties and the universal declaration of human rights; 5. Modern comparative law development: national provisions concerning legality; 6. Legality in the modern international and internationalized criminal courts and tribunals; 7. Legality as a rule of customary international law today; Conclusion: the endurance of legality in national and international criminal law.

Editorial Reviews

'Kenneth Gallant's book is a very welcome one and surely one of the better analyses, if not the best, of the principle of legality.' W. T. Worster, Journal of International Criminal Justice

From the Publisher