This article discusses the nature of the International Criminal Court’s Chambers Practice Manual as an interpretative source, in the context of a wider debate on judges as procedural lawmakers in international criminal law. As is clear from the ICC Statute, the Practice Manual should not be seen as a source of law on a par with the Statute or Rules of Procedure and Evidence, nor even does it represent a secondary source of law. However, this article argues that the Practice Manual oversteps the mark of what could be expected from a guidance document containing merely non-binding recommendations in two important respects. First, as expressly acknowledged by the ICC’s President, the judges have perceived the amendment of the Practice Manual as an alternative to proposing amendments to the Court’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence to the Assembly of States Parties, a practice which has been fraught with difficulty in recent years. Second, the Practice Manual contains explicit instructions to Chambers, including text to be included in Chambers’ decisions, which appears to cross the boundaries of what should be expected from a guidance document. This article further argues that some early decisions of the Court following its adoption give the Practice Manual a normative force that ought not to attach to it. This raises issues of fairness, legal certainty, predictability and coherence, and overall, it is argued that the Practice Manual marks an unforeseen return to judicial law making in international criminal procedure.

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国际刑事法院分庭实践手册

本文在关于法官作为国际刑法程序立法者的更广泛辩论的背景下，讨论了《国际刑事法院分庭实践手册》作为解释性来源的性质。从《国际刑事法院规约》中可以清楚地看出，《实践手册》不应被视为与《规约》或《程序和证据规则》同等的法律渊源，甚至也不应被视为次要法律渊源。然而，本文认为，实践手册在两个重要方面超出了仅包含非约束性建议的指导文件的预期。首先，正如国际刑事法院主席明确承认的那样，法官们认为，对《实践手册》的修订可以替代向缔约国大会提出对法院《程序和证据规则》的修订，这是近年来充满困难的做法。其次，《实践手册》包含对钱伯斯的明确说明，包括要包含在钱伯斯裁决中的文本，这似乎超出了对指导文件的预期范围。本文进一步认为，法院在通过后的一些早期裁决赋予了《实践手册》不应附加的规范性力量。这引起了公平性、法律确定性、可预测性和连贯性等问题，总体而言，有人认为《实践手册》标志着国际刑事诉讼程序中司法立法不可预见的回归。