The Concept of a Joint Criminal Enterprise and Domestic Modes of Liability for Parties to a Crime: A Comparison of German and English Law

The concept of a Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE) has becomea useful tool in international criminal law. It allows courtsto hold individuals criminally liable for group activities towhich they have contributed in a criminally relevant way. Theconcept allows for an attribution of criminal responsibilityof unforeseen consequences of such group activities, and itseems to enable the prosecution and the courts to extend criminalliability to high-level perpetrators that use subordinated personsfor their criminal aims. The advantages of such a tool are obvioussince the crimes under international criminal law are mostlyof a systematic, large-scale and collective character, whiledomestic criminal law mainly deals with less complex crimesthat are normally committed by individuals who can easily belinked to the crime. Due to this empirical or criminologicalfact, it seems logical that the normal modes of liability forparties to a crime used in domestic criminal law need to beadapted, and that a rather extensive assignment of criminalliability for secondary parties is justified in internationalcriminal law. This article seeks to question this assumptionby undertaking a comparative analysis of domestic modes of liability.The author aims to show, on the one hand, to what extent theconcept of JCE is in line with the general concept of partiesto a crime in domestic criminal law. On the other hand, theauthor argues that abandoning the idea of JCE as an independentmode of liability may lead to better compliance with the principlesof legality and individual criminal responsibility and therebyincrease the legitimacy of international criminal law.