Legal activity in the third quarter-century of the life of the Convention has greatly surpassed that of the first two quarter-centuries. This can be measured in terms of case law and scholarly writing. The interpretation of the Convention’s definition of genocide has remained quite narrow, and is essentially confined to physical genocide, destruction and extermination. There is potential for this to change in such a way as to extend the scope of the Convention to situations where groups are attacked with view to being driven from the territory where they have lived. This would require a degree of judicial activism. Care must be taken because of the danger of uncontrolled expansion of the definition. The phenomenon of politicized allegations of genocide is significant. Although there has been some resistance to the idea of a hierarchy of international crimes, genocide should remain ’the crime of crimes’.