Wibke K. Timmermann - Böcker

This volume examines the underexplored relationship between philosophy and international criminal law, disciplines commonly separated despite their shared engagement with truth, responsibility, and judgment. Philosophical inquiry has long analyzed concepts central to criminal adjudication, yet these insights have rarely informed international criminal trial practice. Consequently, notions such as intent, causation, qualia, fairness, truth, dignity, luck, and amnesty are often employed in conceptually thin or imprecise ways. Treating these notions simultaneously as legal requirements, forms of deliberative reasoning, and subjects of contemporary philosophical debate, the book demonstrates how philosophy can clarify, discipline, and strengthen international legal reasoning. The discussions, written by philosophically and scientifically informed scholars and experienced international law practitioners, revisit foundational philosophical ideas, critically reassess their assumptions, and translate them into operational tools for international criminal jurisprudence. Through close engagement with doctrinal practice and trial reasoning, the contributors address persistent conceptual gaps and unresolved interpretive difficulties that have shaped past and ongoing proceedings. The volume aims to expand the analytical resources available to judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, investigators, and scholars. It ultimately presents international criminal law as a form of applied philosophy, arguing that rigorous philosophical analysis can enhance the coherence, fairness, and practical effectiveness of international criminal law practice worldwide.

This book offers a comprehensive study of incitement in its various forms in international law. It discusses the status of incitement to hatred in human rights law and examines its harms and dangers as well as the impact of a prohibition on freedom of speech. The book additionally presents a detailed definition of punishable incitement. In this context, Wibke K. Timmermann argues that incitement should be recognized as the crime of persecution, where it is utilized within a system of persecutory measures by the State or a similarly powerful organization.The book draws on the Nahimana case before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as well as jurisprudence from German and other courts following World War II to provide support for this proposal. The work moreover provides a comprehensive analysis of public incitement to crimes; solicitation or instigation; and the related modes of liability aiding and abetting and commission through another person.Dedicated exclusively and comprehensively to incitement in its various forms, this book will be of essential use and great interest to students and researchers of international criminal law and human rights law, in addition to practitioners within these areas.