International criminal law implementation and constitutional law

‘Domestication’ of international criminal law, of course, requires compliance with domestic constitutional law. The international origin of the obligations to prosecute and punish those responsible of the most heinous international crimes do not rule out the general requirement that criminal provisions, trials and convictions be consistent with the basic principle set forth, in criminal matters, by the national constitutions. And Italy is certainly no exception, in this respect. In this brief contribution, I will try to highlight some of the challenges which a future legislator will face in this respect while establishing the offences and their punishments in this field, as well as introducing provisions configuring defences and other provisions of the so called ‘general part’ of the international criminal law criminal. Many of those challenges are common to every modern legal system; some of them, however, are specific to the Italian context, or are particularly sensitive here, due to the presence of special Constitutional provision or their particular understanding by the relevant case law.