Larry May is the first philosopher to systematically articulate the conceptual and normative foundations of international criminal law. In Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account (2005), May develops criteria for determining the conditions under which individuals should be held criminally liable for crimes with a collective dimension, such as crimes against humanity, by international criminal tribunals. The “international harm principle” restricts crimes against humanity, and liability for such crimes to cases of widespread or systematic harm where groups are either the victims or perpetrators of harm; in the case of perpetrators, the groups in question are either states or state-like groups. Harms that are not group based, May argues, fall under the jurisdiction of domestic courts only. According to May, international tribunals in such cases are justified because the obligation to respect state sovereignty (and so a state’s jurisdiction over responding to crimes committed within...
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Murphy, C. (2011). May, Larry. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_36
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