The Principal Issues

(24)     It is respecfully submitted that an appropriate judicial analysis of the aspects of international and domestic criminal law which are involved in the determination of this application is disclosed by a sequntial examination of the following three principal issues:

THE FIRST PRINCIPAL ISSUE: Establishing the existence of the crime.

Q. Is there a criminal offence, disclosed under the criminal international customary law, termed the commission of a “crime against peace”, and if so how is it defined ?

THE SECOND PRINCIPAL ISSUE: Establishing the liabaility of individuals.

Q. Does the offence of committing a ‘crime against peace’, a crime under international law, nevertheless carry with it a criminal liability for individual persons, who can be shown to have been sufficiently involved in the commission of such an offence ?

THE THIRD PRINCIPAL ISSUE: Establishing the Adoption of the Crime into the Common Law.

Q. Is a ‘crime against peace’, under customary international criminal law, together with the invidiual personal libility therefor, adopted into, and thereby forms a part of, the English Common Law, justiciable by the ordinary criminal courts of the land?

(25)      Accordingly, it shall be my purposes in setting out the argument on this application to address myself to those issues in order. Having done so, and having succeeded in answering each question in the affirmative, I shall then submit that, It follows the Defendants to this claim, in the courts below, in reaching their respective decisions not to issue the process sought, have made an error of law (going to jurisdiction), so that in exercise of your supervisory jurisdiction, I humbly beseech, this Honourable Court to grant the relief which I seek.

(26)     However, and for the purposes of the present application for leave alone, I request merely that it be granted, at present, only in so far as would permit a Divisional Court to consider, inter parties, and as a preliminary matter, the following question involved, and which I respectfully submit is of general public importance, to wit:

" Is the law creating a "crime against peace"* capable of being adopted into, and thus of forming a part of, the English common law, cognisable before and justiciable by the ordinary criminal courts of this country - or instead does the internal or domestic recognition of such a criminal offence, first require incorporation by way of statute ? "

* an offence disclosed under authoritative and well-established customary international criminal law, and which, furthermore, is defined as involving a breach of, a universally accepted, positive peremptory norm of customary international law (the ‘jus cogens’), namely the prohibition on the aggressive use of force for the resolution of international disputes.

and it is the opportunity to seek the answer of your Lordships’ Court to that question which I now humbly and respectfully seek.

(27)      Finally, if satisfied that that offence is so adopoted, there is then the question of certain possible further issues which might nonetheless tend to suggest that the Defendants did not have a jurisdiction to issue the criminal process which I sought in respect of such an offence. As to such further issues, I have set out some provisional arguments in the last segment of my submissions, divided into common, statute and international law aspects respectively.

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