Module description:
This course will deal with one of the most important and controversial areas of contemporary international and criminal law, as well as criminal justice. This is the internationalisation, and indeed globalisation of crime. The focus of the course is the law and context of this phenomenon and critiquing how the law and its institutions have developed, work, and could be reformed (if necessary).
To begin, after discussion of some conceptual matters, the course will cover some international crimes in the narrow sense, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, aggression and genocide. It will also look at a selection of the international institutions that have been created to combat them and have proved engines of progress in the area.
The module is also intended to provide students with a detailed understanding of a selection of transnational crimes, such as drug trafficking, money laundering, people trafficking, terrorism and torture, and the treaties that create obligations for States with respect to their suppression. These raise similar, although by no means identical problems to international crimes. The module will also cover the mechanisms of state co-operation with respect to transnational crimes, such as extradition, this will include the various international bodies dedicated to promoting inter-State co-operation and the suppression of transnational criminality such as INTERPOL and the UNODC.
The module aims to grant candidates a holistic approach to the problems that the globalisation of crime causes. Hence it will explore the current position trend towards the globalisation of criminal justice, the forces behind this (criminal but also institutional), the forms it is taking, their impact as well as problems associated with it (susceptibility to corruption for example) and potential further developments. It will look at the legality and legitimacy of the current mechanisms employed in the fight against global crime and evaluate the proposals to improve them.