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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (64139)	1/2/2003 11:41:51 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Nadine, we could easily go back and forth. However, for purposes of comity, I won't--lol! FaultLine already faulted me once. But, hey, I wuz innocent--lol!!! Hey, I resemble that remark! -g- We pounded the ICC a while back on the thread back. You got that straight. The US Constitution is much better was my shorthand for my conclusions from the debate, one of which is that the proposed ICC is highly, highly unconstitutional, whatever its other faults or virtues, and as such the Senate has no authority to ratify it without a constitutional amendment. Furthermore, the ICC would be appointed by something resembling the UN General Council and would be pretty much unaccountable afterwards. The court would be prosecuting some very vague laws (have you read the Rome Ruling?) as the ICC prosecutor sees fit, without the benefit of many Constitutional protections that we are used to taking for granted. The treaty claims essentially universal jurisdiction over signatories and non-signatories alike, a novel idea for international treaties. Anybody who thinks this arrangement wouldn't be highly politicized at once needs a healthier level of cynicism imo. Bush at least is sworn to uphold the Constitution and is accountable to American voters. First, I imagine citizens of other countries also take pride in their own respective constitutional declarations, that pride of country is not simply an 'American' thing. I think you are conflating two very separate concepts: pride of country, which many countries have, and pride of constitution, which few countries have as Americans understand it. For us, the Constitution is the basic contract for our country. Immigrants become Americans by 'signing on' to the Constitution. Most other countries are based on an ethnos and a location. Their constitutional arrangement is whatever it is but it does not define them and is subject to change, usually from the top. The current European joke is that you must be a democracy to join the EU but you must give it up once you do. A world court, after all, is just that: a world court. That's just what we are arguing over. The Europeans are trying to establish one world court but their problem is that their is no international system of laws (just treaties and conventions). People keep trying to wish the UN into the role but anyone who hasn't noticed their huge failures and total politicization is living inside a Star Trek episode, imo. Steven den Beste had some good comments on the ICC, and why Americans wouldn't want it even if we weren't the strongest kid on the block: denbeste.nu denbeste.nu denbeste.nu