ABSTRACT
The principle of complementarity, which governs the International Criminal Court (ICC), will inevitably require some difficult determinations about whether a national proceeding warrants deference. One may discern in the literature three major theories about what the ICC should scrutinise when it assesses a national proceeding: the nature of the charges laid, the severity of the sentence imposed, or the quality of the process adopted. These three approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive; they can be combined in different ways and with different emphases into plausible schemas.
