:: Netmarcos' Notes ::

:: Thursday, February 12, 2004 ::

Is the ICC a threat to peace? In "A Lawless Global Court" , John Rosenthal says that this just might be the case.

The very idea of an international criminal court may well be a dangerously utopian one to begin with. As various critics of the ICC have pointed out, courts derive whatever democratic legitimacy they may enjoy from being embedded in more comprehensive systems of government in which their powers are checked by democratically accountable institutions. In the absence, then, of a “world government,” a “world court” will necessarily be unbound from all the constraints that prevent judicial practice from degenerating into judicial tyranny. (In deference to this fact, the International Court of Justice, in marked contrast to the ICC, may only adjudicate disputes among states and, even then, only with their consent. It has no jurisdiction over persons.) A careful examination of the ICC’s statute, however, reveals that the icc is not merely a matter of good intentions gone awry in the face of stubborn political realities. The ICC, so to say, has been made to be abused. It threatens to replace a classical international law whose purpose was to secure peace with a supposedly “new” international law whose raison d’être is war.

:: Mark 11:26 AM [+] ::
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