Prosecuting Superior Responsibility in International Criminal Law

This book offers a critical and original examination of how the doctrine of superior responsibility has been interpreted and applied in international criminal law. It challenges prevailing scholarly approaches by shifting the focus from legal characterization to the doctrine’s conceptual components — an often overlooked but more pressing arena.

At the same time, by tracing the doctrine’s evolution from ancient military theory through religious and medieval legal traditions to its current position in international criminal law, the book interrogates the underlying tension between its nature as a form of vicarious liability and the principle of personal culpability central to criminal law theory — an approach the book critically examines, and perhaps ultimately rejects.

Rather than merely summarizing case law, the book explores how and why international tribunals — particularly the International Criminal Court in the landmark Bemba case — have applied the doctrine inconsistently. It engages with jurisprudence from ad hoc and hybrid tribunals to expose doctrinal ambiguities and recurring misapplications that undermine legal coherence and accountability.

An additional contribution of this work is the development of a syllogistic test for assessing superior responsibility in contexts involving human rights violations and treaty-based offenses. Balancing doctrinal critique with a normative analysis, the book offers a deeper theoretical and practical lens on one of international criminal law’s most debated areas.

Intended for legal scholars, practitioners and graduate students, this book is a valuable resource for anyone seeking a more principled and analytically rigorous understanding of superior responsibility in both historical and contemporary contexts.

Humoud Y. Al-Fadhli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Law of the College of Law of Kuwait University in Sabah Al-Salem University City, Kuwait.