TEMPORAL JURISDICTION

Temporal jurisdiction is the time period over which the Court can exercise its powers.

No statute of limitations applies to any of the crimes defined in the ICC/Rome Statute.
However, the Court's jurisdiction is not completely retroactive. Individuals can only be
prosecuted for crimes that took place on or after 1 July 2002, which is the date that the
Rome Statute entered into force.

If a state became party to the Statute, and therefore a member of the Court, after 1 July
2002, then the Court cannot exercise jurisdiction prior to the membership date for
certain cases. For example, if the Statute entered into force for a state on 1 January
2003, the Court could only exercise temporal jurisdiction over crimes that took place in
that state or were committed by a national of that state on or after 1 January 2003.

The period of an international tribunal’s temporal jurisdiction is the span of time during
which an act must have occurred before the tribunal may consider if the act breached an
obligation. There are many questions concerning this particular aspect of an
international tribunal’s jurisdiction.

1. Does a tribunal have power over acts that occurred after the entry into force of
the obligation allegedly breached but before the tribunal’s jurisdiction was
accepted?
2. What about acts that began before the tribunal’s jurisdiction was accepted but
continued after?
3. To what extent can acts before the period of the tribunal’s jurisdiction affect its
decision on whether or not there is a breach through acts afterwards?

Despite its importance, the temporal jurisdiction of international tribunals is not well
understood. Tribunals often confuse different aspects of their jurisdiction and refuse to
hear cases they should have heard, or agree to hear cases they should not.