| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 法律學系 === 98 === The efforts by the international community to prosecute and punish mass atrocities have entered upon a new phase since the end of the Cold War. On the one hand, international criminal courts, like the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, have been gradually set up. On the other hand, the courts of a few countries have started to prosecute and punish perpetrators of mass atrocities by resorting to the so-called “universal jurisdiction.” An unstoppable trend has emerged, which had had almost no effects on the court of the author’s country until a criminal complaint was filed by Falun Gong practitioners against Jiang Ze-ming in 2003. The result of this case not only showed the lack of experience and expertise in the court of the author’s country, but also exposed inadequacy in the legislation of the author’s country to deal with such a case.
Therefore, this study makes an assessment of this trend, focusing on three atrocious crimes, namely war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The first part addresses the substantive concepts of the three crimes, including their origins and definitions. The second part is devoted to mechanisms for jurisdiction over the three crimes, including national courts exercising universal jurisdiction and those international criminal courts currently in operation. Regarding universal jurisdiction, the related laws and cases of seven countries are offered as examples. Regarding those international criminal courts currently in operation, their backgrounds, their territorial, temporal and personal jurisdiction, crimes within their jurisdiction, as well as their recent development, are introduced. An additional section in the second part is dedicated to the introduction of a new model, namely hybrid national courts. The last part lists several legal and non-legal obstacles that may prevent national courts or international criminal courts from exercising jurisdiction over the three crimes. The legal ones include immunity, statute of limitations and amnesty, and the non-legal ones mainly consist of political considerations. The applicability of these obstacles to the three crimes is further analyzed. The author concludes by summarizing the developments of the aforementioned trend and proposing legislative amendments and enactment for the author’s country.
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