The International Criminal Court’s Ad Hoc Jurisdiction Revisited

Abstract

Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which allows a state that is not a party to the Statute to “accept the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court” by way of a declaration lodged with the registrar, is one of the Statute's most inconspicuous provisions. It has attracted only brief notice either in the general literature on the jurisdiction of the ICC or in the particular context of the debate over U.S. objections to the Court's third-party jurisdiction. Few writers have looked closely at the provision's construction and procedural regime, and the first declaration made by a state under this provision—by the Ivory Coast in February 2005—has gone almost unnoticed in international theory and practice.