The Proliferation of Judicial Panels and Judicial Partnerships

Abstract

The prosecution of core crimes is a challenging experience which can justify the adoption of extra-ordinary mechanisms for such purpose. What will most likely save the need to continue relying upon the ICC is the prosecution of senior leaders and high-level suspects. Judicial panels and judicial partnerships are gradually morphing. These noteworthy developments can lead to an integrated system which relies upon consultative cooperation between, what should hopefully become, a coordinated community of courts. The outcome of the proliferation of courts of tribunals is a system of ongoing and constructive judicial dialogue, the genesis of which precedes the ICC itself, wherein courts and tribunals no longer operate in isolation from each other. Courts and tribunals must interact when international judges and/or internationalized courts/tribunals apply domestic law. Interaction is also necessary when international rulings are domestically enforced and when judgments of international courts are implemented domestically. Since complementarity and subsidiarity presuppose that the State locus delicti commissi either did not investigate and prosecute or did not do so with the necessary vigour, some form of interaction between various judicial systems is inevitable. Interaction is habitually required in other crucial matters and throughout the entire procedural iter, such as the surrender and/or extradition of a suspect pre-trial, the production of evidence during the trial and the execution of judgments further to the res judicata, post-trial. The interaction is multi-dimensional and multi-faceted. It does not only play a role either vertically or horizontally. It can intersect the entire enforcement spectrum at various levels.