Professor Dermot Groome participates in panel discussion on 'The Future of International Criminal Law'

CARLISLE, Pa.—On November 17, 2025, Professor Dermot Groome participated in a panel discussion on the future of international criminal law organized by the Atrocity Prevention Study Group of the Stimson Center. Other panelists included Harold Koh of Yale Law School and Clint Williamson of Georgetown Law. The Stimson Center is a leading foreign affairs think tank promoting international security through applied research and global engagement.

Groome gave a pessimistic assessment of the state of international justice for a number of reasons, most significantly, the opposition of the current U.S. administration to the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Groome recognized that the centralization of international justice in the ICC has made it vulnerable to efforts to undermine it. He suggested that we work toward a decentralization and domestication of international justice by scaling up the number of prosecutions undertaken under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Universal jurisdiction is a principle of customary international law that empowers national courts with jurisdiction over grave international crimes. Groome gave an overview of some successful prosecutions under this principle in Germany, France, Sweden, the U.S., and the Netherlands.

Groome proposed creating a robust international infrastructure that supports universal jurisdiction cases so that it becomes an avenue of justice equal to the ICC. He advocated for the creation of an international convention that would address the challenges in creating this system. A convention on universal jurisdiction could create standards for the collection of evidence and establish repositories of evidentiary dossiers accessible to signatory nations. A convention could create a final right of appeal to the ICC to promote consistent interpretations of international crimes. Groome spoke about his current research exploring this idea.

A recording of the public portion of the panel discussion can be found on the Stimson Center’s website by clicking here.

Professor Dermot Groome is a Professor of Law and the Harvey A. Feldman Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Penn State Dickinson Law. Much of his teaching, scholarship, and service focus on emerging areas of human rights and international criminal law and draw upon his deep expertise and experiences. After starting his career in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he was a member of the Sex Crimes Unit, and after working in Jamaica, W.I. on issues of community development, human rights, and children’s rights, Professor Groome worked in Cambodia. While in Cambodia, he served as a Legal Advisor to the International Human Rights Law Group, helped lead an investigation into a 1997 attack on peaceful protestors and drafted a report for the UN Security Council, helped the Cambodia Defender’s Project and Legal Aid of Cambodia investigate deaths in police custody, worked on issues related to the incarceration of children, and wrote a draft juvenile criminal procedure code. Professor Groome subsequently spent over 11 years as a senior war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He investigated and drafted the first genocide indictment against a sitting head of state, Slobodan Milošević, and was the Senior Trial Attorney for the Bosnia indictment. In total, Groome led the prosecution of five international criminal trials including the case against Ratko Mladić, who was convicted of genocide for the murder of over 7,000 men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. He led eight large complex international investigations of senior military, political, and police officials. Groome’s cases all included crimes of sexual violence against women, men, and children. He was instrumental in the development of Joint Criminal Enterprise, a theory of criminal responsibility often used to assess the culpability of senior officials for the crimes committed by their subordinates. Two documentaries have been made about Professor Groome’s cases: The Trial of Ratko Mladić (PBS/Frontline 2019) and Crimes Before the ICTY: Višegrad (UN TV 2017).