Criminal Jurisdiction 100 Years after the 1907 Hague Peace Conference : 2007 Hague Joint Conference on Contemporary Issues of International Law

We have taken note with considerable admiration and satisfaction the completion of the manuscript of this book.

It contains the proceedings of the highly successful Joint Conf- ence of the American Society of International Law and the Netherlands Society of Int- national Law, entitled Criminal Jurisdiction 100 Years Afer the 1907 Hague Peace Conference.

Our Hague Joint Conferences have increasingly come to serve as the main transatlantic meeting place and forum of debate of international lawyers, including both practitioners and academics.

As such they play a useful role in promoting mutual und- standing and international co-operation.

It proved to be highly relevant to commemorate the Second Hague Peace Conf- ence of 1907 and discuss its contemporary relevance.

Whereas international criminal jurisdiction as such was not yet a topic at that time, the 1907 discussions were in ret- spect already highly relevant to it.

Te Second Hague Peace Conference resulted in a major revision of the 1899 Convention on the Pacifc Settlement of International Disputes, a Declaration on obligatory arbitration, a Draf Convention for the Creation of a Court of Arbitral Justice (efectively the frst draf of what would become the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice), a Convention on the Creation of an International Prize Court (which as a result of a lack of ratifcations never came into being) and a series of other conventions, declarations and regulations concerning naval and land warfare.