International Journal of Law and Legal Studies

International Journal of Law and Legal Studies ISSN 2736-1608 Vol. 13 (3), pp. 001-023, March, 2025. Available online at www.internationalscholarsjournals.org © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC): Internal Guidelines and Their Implications for the Rule of Law

Stan Starygin

UN House Deloitte Tower, National Capital District, Port Moresby Papua New Guinea. E-mail: [email protected].

Accepted 26 September, 2024

Abstract

This paper encapsulates an in-depth examination of the legality of the authority invoked by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) to create a set of rules of procedure and evidence known as the Internal Rules (IRs). In the void of public information pertaining to the ECCC’s rationale for creating the IRs, this paper, in part, seeks to reconstruct the relevant judicial arguments and, to the greater extent, focuses on answering the question of which of the arguments put forward during the adoption process of the IRs should have been but were not entertained and accepted by the judicial panel to ensure the legality of the actions associated with the creation of the IRs. To this end, the paper extracts a statutory test which is used as the litmus test of the provisions of the IRs analyzed throughout the narrative. The application of this test, in the end, results in the separation of the provisions of the IRs ab initio identified as suspect into those for the adoption of which authority exists at the international level and those which the ECCC has invented ultra vires the law on the establishment of the ECCC and applicable international standards.

Key words: Extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia (ECCC), hybrid tribunals, ultra vires actions, internal rules (IRs), rules of procedure and evidence (RPE), international criminal law.