The defence of superior orders and how it compares to the legal doctrine of command responsibility in today's international criminal court

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to analyse the two concepts of superior orders and command responsibility and to determine how they relate to each other under current international criminal law. While already existing on some level prior to the Second World War, it was after WWII that the two doctrines began to be thoroughly examined and developed. In a number of cases these the two concepts are used simultaneously and thus, this dissertation considers them separately and follows them up with a consideration of a number of scenarios. Are these two concepts related or are they independent of each other? This paper aims to address the reality brought forward by the two concepts and shall assess the validity of both principles under current international criminal law.