Crime of aggression

The crime of aggression is the leadership crime of planning, preparing, initiating, or executing a manifest violation of the UN Charter through one state’s use of armed force against another.

Definition of aggression: The legal criteria for identifying a state’s use of armed force as an act of aggression. The crime requires an underlying state act that meets this legal definition.
Nuremberg trials: The postwar international trials of leading Nazi officials before the International Military Tribunal. The tribunal prosecuted crimes against peace, the precursor to the modern crime of aggression.
International Criminal Court: A permanent international court that prosecutes individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression. It is the principal court with jurisdiction over the modern crime.
War crimes: Serious violations of international humanitarian law committed during armed conflict. War crimes regulate conduct in conflict, while aggression concerns the decision to use force.
UN Charter Article 2(4): The UN Charter provision requiring states to refrain from threatening or using force against other states. Its prohibition supplies the central rule that an act of aggression must manifestly violate.
London Charter: The 1945 agreement establishing the International Military Tribunal and defining its jurisdiction. It made planning and waging aggressive war an international crime for the first time.
Kampala Amendments: The 2010 amendments to the Rome Statute defining aggression and setting conditions for the Court’s jurisdiction. They activated the Court’s aggression jurisdiction from 2018.
Crimes against humanity: Certain widespread or systematic attacks directed against civilian populations, committed with knowledge of the attack. Unlike aggression, this crime does not require an unlawful interstate use of force.
Leadership clause: The restriction of individual criminal responsibility for aggression to people able to control or direct a state’s political or military action. It distinguishes this crime from offenses that can be committed by ordinary combatants.
Crimes against peace: The Nuremberg-era offense of planning, initiating, or waging a war of aggression. This earlier offense supplied the crime’s postwar legal foundation.

Linked from 11 pages