A Genealogy of State Crime in International Law: Contrasting Criminological Perspectives

In international public law, the concept of state crime has been extensively debated. For some international law commentators “[t]he concept of state responsibility for international crimes is juridically feasible and may be analyzed in terms of a criminal organization model or a corporate crime model” (Jørgensen 2000: 280); to others, “[t]he criminal state is juridically speaking a nonsense . . . The punishability of the state is both a legal and a practical impossibility.” (Drost 1959: 304). Although currently common legal understanding represents this notion as alien to the legal tradition, this term has a relevant place in the historical debates and development of international law. This paper discusses international law developments in contrast to criminological reflections relating to state crime, drawing attention to possible cross-references between these disciplines.