La camera preliminare della corte penale internazionale : garanzia di legittimità o garanzia politica dell’azione penale internazionale?

The Pre-Trial Chamber is an unprecedented institution in international criminal justice, which lies at the heart of the preliminary phase of the proceedings before the International Criminal Court as a compromise achieved at the Rome Conference. The feature of Pre-Trial Chamber as "check and balance" of the autonomy granted to the Prosecutor especially in the context of the trigger mechanism of the Court's jurisdiction based on the Prosecutor's proprio motu action seems to reveal the political nature of Pre-Trial Chamber s standing within the Court. Although never put into practice to date, the judicial review power conferred on the Chamber may potentially enable it to steer the Court s policy in accordance with the principle of complementarity. Moreover, the Pre-Trial Chamber is intended to meet due process requirements from the beginning of the proceedings. In this respect, although not entirely comparable to the juge d instruction of the inquisitorial tradition, the Pre-Trial Chamber is largely inspired by the French and Italian legal systems rather than by the common law judicial model which traditionally characterizes international criminal trials, where no interplay between the judge and the parties is provided during pre-trial proceedings. In fact, the Chamber has so far actively played its role of ensuring proceedings fairness, favoring a broad and teleological interpretation of the Rome Statute and of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence. Through the analysis of the travaux préparatoires of the International Criminal Court and of the Statute and Rules relevant provisions as well as of the early case-law of the Court, the work aims to discuss whether the Pre-Trial Chamber represents a guarantee of the Court s policy rather than of international criminal proceedings legitimacy or either.