International Criminal Tribunals And National Sovereignty

From the 1940s, 1950s, international organizations have enjoyed a golden period of development. The number of international organizations has been growing at a very rapid speed. They have acquired more and more power. Their influence has been greatly deepened and widened. Of course they set more and more limits to national sovereignty. As a special type of international organization, international criminal tribunals tremendously infringed national sovereignty, too. This paper tries to present a general introduction to international criminal tribunals and induce the aspects of the relationship between international criminal tribunals and national sovereignty. This paper borrows from the realism school and idealism school of international relation theory and adopts the view of international institutionism. This paper also employs authentic proof, historical analysis and inductive method as research tools. This paper points out that it is natural for the international criminal tribunals to restrict national sovereignty in today's world where nations are highly inter-dependent, but international criminal tribunals and national sovereignty will co-exist and national sovereignty will not be totally denied as long as the parallel structure of the international society has not been fundamentally changed.