Professor Dermot Groome trains Ukrainian prosecutors on the legal theory of command responsibility

CARLISLE, Pa.—On November 26, 2025, Professor Dermot Groome participated in a day-long training for Ukrainian prosecutors on the international customary legal principle of command responsibility. Command responsibility holds superiors criminally responsible for the crimes of their subordinates if they have effective control over those subordinates; they knew that a crime was about to be committed or had been committed; and they failed to prevent or punish that crime.

The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) recently adopted Article 31^-1 of their criminal code, formally incorporating this principle into their justice system. The training was designed to help Ukrainian prosecutors use command responsibility as an effective means of combating impunity for international crimes.

The training was organized by the International Development Law Organization and the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. Groome has been training and advising Ukrainian prosecutors since the start of the current conflict in February 2022. He has traveled to Kyiv four times as part of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, a joint effort by the U.S., U.K., and the E.U. to provide expert advice and support in the investigation and prosecution of international crimes. He regularly meets with Ukrainian prosecutors via Zoom to answer questions and provide advice.

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).