A new international criminal justice research tool has been released online to facilitate public access to the vast collection of jurisprudence produced by the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICTR/ICTY Case Law Database (CLD) will be an invaluable aid to professionals working in the field of international criminal law.

The new database is accessible from the website of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, as part of that institution’s mandate to maintain and promote the legacies of the ICTR and ICTY.

With almost 1,800 entries, covering pronouncements on elements of statutory crimes, modes of liability and other issues, the CLD expounds the pioneering case law produced by the two tribunals.

The CLD replaces a previous database, the Appeals Chamber Case Law Research Tool (ACCLRT), and offers simplified access as well as quicker and more productive searches. Presented as an interactive table, the new database allows users to search through hundreds of case extracts by using as criteria legal notions and sub-notions, and provisions from the ICTR and ICTY Statutes and Rules of Procedure and Evidence, as well as elements of international legal instruments. The database is currently available in English only. The ACCLRT will continue to be accessible, but only in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian.

The CLD is the result of a joint effort by the ICTY Web Unit and the ICTR/ICTY Appeals Chamber. It is being continuously updated in line with the developments in the tribunals’ jurisprudence, and will remain a dynamic component of the legacies of the two courts for years to come.