Criminal law makes a classic distinction between the ‘special part’ and the ‘general part’, and this is reflected in most criminal codes. The ‘special part’ consists of the offences subject to prosecution, and has been treated in this study under the heading of subject-matter jurisdiction. Within the context of international criminal law this makes more sense because, unlike domestic legal systems where the ‘special part’ comprises all acts to which society has decided to attach criminal consequences, international criminal law contemplates only a relatively limited sub-set of criminal behaviour. The ‘general part’ refers to a body of rules applicable to criminal offences, mainly those concerning how individuals participate in criminal activity and the justifications or excuses they invoke in answer to criminal charges. Most criminal justice systems provide relatively extensive and detailed codifications of these ‘general principles’, although much of their formulation and elaboration is also left to judges.

The statutes of the United Nations ad hoc criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone say relatively little about the general principles of law applicable to the offences within their subject-matter jurisdiction. This is in keeping with the model of the Nuremberg Charter, but dramatically at variance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which contains a relatively detailed section of general principles, most of them found in Part 3. It consists of twelve provisions and is entitled ‘General Principles of Criminal Law’.