The International Criminal Court has been making headlines lately—from the October conviction in the Darfur case for war crimes and crimes against humanity to ongoing debates about arrest warrants and state cooperation. If you're researching the ICC or international criminal law more broadly, there's a powerful free resource you should know about: the ICC Legal Tools Database.

While many researchers head straight to the ICC's official website for case documents, the Legal Tools Database is a hidden gem that goes far beyond what the main ICC site offers. Maintained by the ICC, this comprehensive database doesn't just cover ICC cases—it includes materials from international criminal tribunals dating back decades, including the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR), the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and others.

The Legal Tools Database contains over 50,000 documents—everything from court judgments and trial transcripts to legal briefs and tribunal statutes."database contains over 50,000 documents—everything from court judgments and trial transcripts to legal briefs and tribunal statutes.

You can search by keyword, case name, file name/number. Filters let you narrow results by document type (like judgments, decisions, or transcripts), phase of case, specific organization/tribunal, and other criteria.

Once you click on a particular case, you will get detailed metadata —such as document type, case phase, and page count—making it easier to evaluate your case's relevance before downloading it. 

If you're new to the database, there are helpful tutorial films covering basic searching, navigating search results, and advanced features like persistent URLs for citation.

In brief, whether researching war crimes, genocide, or crimes against humanity, the database offers essential documents and precedents from across international criminal law. For futher questions on  international criminal law research, contact Sunil Rao, Foreign and International Law Librarian at the UW Law Library.

Submitted by Sunil Rao, on November 4, 2025

This article appears in the categories: Law Library