Late April 2009, the International Criminal Court (ICC) launched the new
version of the Legal Tools, an online library on international criminal
law and justice which will empower victims and others who seek a judicial
response to atrocities by providing a central vehicle to obtain
information on international criminal law.
The Legal Tools amount to a knowledge-transfer platform for international
criminal and human rights law made freely available to the general public
through the website of the ICC. The Legal Tools Database is the most
comprehensive on international criminal law. It contains more than 40,000
documents, including decisions and indictments from all international or
internationalised criminal tribunals, preparatory works of the ICC, case
documents from the ICC, treaties, information about national legal
systems, and relevant decisions from national courts. The service also
contains a new knowledge-base on national legislation implementing the ICC
Statute.
The Legal Tools were designed and developed in the Legal Advisory Section
of the ICC Office of the Prosecutor by Morten Bergsmo and his team, while
a network of outsourcing partners are collecting and registering the
documents, metadata and keywords in the Legal Tools Database: the
Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (University of Oslo), the Human Rights
Law Centre (University of Nottingham), the International Research and
Documentation Centre for War Crimes (University of Marburg), the Institute
of International Law and International Relations (University of Graz), the
T.M.C. Asser Institute, the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation
of Law, and Trial. The Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre has developed
the knowledge-base on implementing legislation. The Institute of
Informatics and Law (University of Saarbrücken) has technically
implemented the Legal Tools Database and Website.
The Legal Tools can be accessed through this web page:
http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/Legal+Texts+and+Tools/