The Proposal for an International Anti-Corruption Court: What Law Should the Court Apply?

Abstract

In 2014, US federal judge Mark Wolf proposed the establishment of an International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC) to redress the impunity enjoyed by corrupt officials in some countries. An essential aspect of the IACC’s functioning, should the proposal ever take off, would concern the substantive law that it applies.  Since no international court or tribunal has yet adjudicated the criminal offences of corruption, one cannot learn directly from current international experience, but must reason from first principles instead. In dealing with the overarching question of what law the IACC should apply, one needs to take into account various factors, which this article considers in turn, including: (a) the objectives of the IACC; (b) the (incomplete) international consensus on the definition of corruption; (c) the effect of prosecuting money laundering offences on the IACC’s jurisdictional reach; (d) the risks of deferring to domestic laws of the state where the alleged offence took place; and (e) the implications of the principle of legality, often expressed in the Latin maxims nullum crimen sine lege and nulla poena sine lege.