FREE LAW JOURNAL Volume 1, Number 2 (October 18, 2005)

FREE LAW JOURNAL - VOLUME 1, NUMBER 2 (18 OCTOBER 2005)
of criminal law of European union or European criminal law), and in
addition to this due to the differences in opinions, degree of
development, tradition, culture, criminal policy and other. This is why
we talk less about a complex and thorough international criminal law
and insist more that certain socially dangerous acts of the international
character be established as punishable in all countries.
Therefore, the unification of criminal legislation under present
conditions of development of international community is not realistic.
This however does not mean that the cooperation among countries
cannot and should not be established which would include building of
certain general principles and rules of criminal law. It should also take
into account that the legislations of some countries (such as Germany,
France or Great Britain) have considerable influence on the
development of criminal legislations of other countries (there is a great
influence of Anglo-Saxon precedent criminal law in the countries of
former Commonwealth).
THE SUBJECT OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW
Regardless of what term we use to name this branch of law, it is
obviously the branch of law, which aims to determine international
criminal offences, the penal system for their perpetrators, the bases and
conditions of penal responsibility and culpability, as well as the
procedures to establish liability and pronounce and execute penalties by
the competent judicial authorities. The subject of the international
criminal law therefore includes two notions and institutes – the notions
of material and procedural character. The notion of general and the
notion of special part of criminal law are distinguished within the
material notion and institutes.
The subject of the general part of criminal law includes establishing of
the notion and elements of international criminal offences, stages in
their commitment, grounds excluding the existence of crime,
commitment of crime by one person or types of complicity, grounds for
criminal liability (state of mind and guilt) as well as the system of
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DRAGAN JOVAŠEVIĆ - APPEARANCE, DEVELOPMENT AND BASIC
CHARACTERISTICS OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE