A/HRC/4/20 page 13 and that “no mention should be made of circumstances under which the taking of life might seem to be condoned”.88 This view was widely rejected as unrealistic in the context of a binding legal instrument.89 The second view was that the provision should “spell out specifically the circumstances in which the taking of life would not be deemed a violation of the general obligation to protect life”,90 and a number of detailed enumerations of exceptions were provided by those holding this view. Others considered, however, that even if agreement could be reached on each particular exception, “any enumeration of limitations would necessarily be incomplete”.91 The third view - which prevailed - was that a general formulation should be adopted that provided a principled basis for distinguishing permissible and impermissible deprivations of life.92 46. The approach adopted was that only one exception - the death penalty - would be expressly specified. It was considered that the concepts of arbitrariness and of the most serious crimes, while complex, were nonetheless accessible to legal reasoning.93 It was noted, moreover, that inasmuch as they had juridical meaning, these concepts could be clarified and given precision through subsequent jurisprudence. It was submitted that the views of the body established to implement ICCPR, the Human Rights Committee, along with the comments of States and the consideration of world public opinion would clarify these concepts as concrete cases arose.94 47. In essence this is the same approach that has been used in relation to all of the terms which have required jurisprudential development in order to give operational clarity to the norms of human rights law, many of which are inevitably and sometimes intentionally relatively open-ended. The evolving jurisprudence in relation to the terms “arbitrary” and “most serious crimes” has developed along two tracks. First, the evaluation of particular sentencing schemes has facilitated incremental clarification without requiring attempts to arrive at an exhaustive enumeration. Second, expert and intergovernmental bodies that have had the time to focus on the concept in light of the whole corpus of international human rights law have proven capable of more precisely defining the scope of the “most serious crimes” in terms of general principles. Moreover, there has been a fruitful interaction between the two modes of jurisprudential development.95 48. The first major attempt to clarify the “most serious crimes” provision on the level of principle was that undertaken by the Economic and Social Council in the early 1980s, resulting in the safeguards. These were drafted by the Committee on Crime Prevention and Control of the Council. Its preliminary draft included a provision specifying that, “Capital punishment may be imposed only for the most serious crimes.” At the Council’s request, the Secretary-General commented on that draft. He noted the “persistent disparity in the number of offences liable to the death penalty” and observed that the norm remained “unclear and open to differing interpretations”. As a result, he proposed the following reformulation in order that article 6 (2) of ICCPR and article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “may be properly applied”: “Capital punishment may be imposed only for the most serious crimes, it being understood that their scope should be limited to intentional lethal offences. Accordingly, it should be excluded for offences which are considered to be of a merely political nature, or for cases in which the political nature of the offence exceeds its criminal aspects.”96