50

Universal jurisdiction is the ability of national courts to prosecute the alleged perpetrator of certain crimes wherever they were committed, and whatever the perpetrator and victims’ nationalities may be. Stemming from a laudable intention—to create legal insecurity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes, so that there is nowhere that they are safe—, it places decision-makers in a dilemma between respecting their international obligations and the constraints of realpolitik. At the intersection between foreign policy and normative legal theory, this article focuses on the political dimension of universal jurisdiction, and in particular on its gradual erosion due to the diplomatic crises it generates.