Does the US not recognize La Hague?
lib.byu.edu
Yes, the US is a signatory power to those treaties. HOWEVER, those treaties DO NOT require a signatory to give up its citizens to an international court for trial as war criminals. You are certainly welcome to attempt to prove otherwise.
Oh. You mean the International Criminal Court. No, the US never signed that treaty. And pretending that the Dis-United States of Europe having signed out of weakness gives them moral superiority is simply too ludicrous for words.
The Court’s flaws are basically two-fold, substantive, and structural. As to the former, the ICC’s authority is vague and excessively elastic, and the Court’s discretion ranges far beyond normal or acceptable judicial responsibilities, giving it broad and unacceptable powers of interpretation that are essentially political and legislative in nature. This is most emphatically not a Court of limited jurisdiction. Crimes can be added subsequently that go beyond those included in the Rome Statute. Parties to the Statute are subject to these subsequently-added crimes only if they affirmatively accept them, but the Statute purports automatically to bind non-parties, such as the United States, to any such new crimes. It is neither reasonable nor fair that these crimes would apply to a greater extent to states that have not agreed to the terms of the Rome Statute than to those that have.
Numerous prospective "crimes" were suggested at Rome and commanded wide support from participating nations, such as the crime of "aggression," which was included in the Statute, but not defined. Although frequently easy to identify, "aggression" can at times be something in the eye of the beholder. For example, Israel justifiably feared in Rome that certain actions, such as its initial use of force in the Six Day War, would be perceived as illegitimate preemptive strikes that almost certainly would have provoked proceedings against top Israeli officials. Moreover, there seems little doubt that Israel will be the target of a complaint in the ICC concerning conditions and practices by the Israeli military in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel recently decided to declare its intention not to become a party to the ICC or to be bound by the Statute’s obligations.
A fair reading of the treaty leaves one unable to answer with confidence whether the United States would now be accused of war crimes for legitimate but controversial uses of force to protect world peace. No U.S. Presidents or their advisors could be assured that they would be unequivocally safe from politicized charges of criminal liability.
state.gov
The draft statute presented to the diplomatic conference went well beyond the initial draft prepared by the International Law Commission (or ILC). The ILC draft, for example, generally restricted the jurisdiction of the proposed International Criminal Court to nations that had become a party to the treaty creating the Court, and limited the substantive reach of the Court to customarily recognized international crimes. The final version of the Statute adopted in Rome, however, went well beyond this (by comparison) modest proposal. The Statute created a Court with hitherto unprecedented jurisdictional reach and with substantive authority to adjudicate a long list of crimes previously unknown to the established canon of customary international law.
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Other Court advocates are even more blunt. A booklet issued by The Women's Caucus for Gender Justice asserts that "ratification of the treaty creating the Court will necessitate in many cases that national laws be in conformity with the ICC Statute." The caucus states that implementation of the ICC Statute will provide an opportunity for groups "all over the world to initiate and consolidate law reforms . . . ." Indeed, the gender caucus asserts that "t is this aspect of the Court – the possibility of national law reform – which may present the most far-reaching potential" for change "in the long run." According to the Caucus, "States parties will be required to review their domestic criminal laws and fill in the gaps to ensure that the crimes enumerated in the ICC Statute are also prohibited domestically."
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Of much greater concern are the potentially far-reaching "crimes against humanity" set out in Article 7. The Statute condemns as "crimes against humanity" such acts as murder, extermination, enslavement, forcible transfer of population, torture, sexual slavery, persecution and "other inhumane acts." These crimes certainly sound terrible, but the ICC Statute gives very little guidance as to what these words actually proscribe.
For example, the crime of "persecution," as set out in the Statute and as further refined in the recently issued "Elements of Crimes," condemns the "severe deprivation" of a group's "fundamental rights." The crime of "inhumane acts" criminalizes the infliction of "great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health, by means of an inhumane act." What do these terms proscribe? At present, it is impossible to say definitively. But, the arguments of some proponents for the Court suggest that the reach of these proscriptions will be far broader than a quick reading of the ICC Statute might suggest.
Consider some of the rhetoric of activists at the forefront of society's gender wars. According to one prominent legal theorist, women have the choice of "either . . . marrying or . . . aligning herself with a pimp . . . . In both cases she typically becomes emotionally, financially, physically, and sexually dependent on and subordinate to a man." Another legal scholar, Dianne Post, in a recent edition of The Women's Rights Reporter, has boldly called for the abolition of marriage. According to Ms. Post,
Marriage itself originated as a way for a man to have one woman at his beck and call. For a woman, it was at first a relief to be responsible only to one man, who was obligated to provide for her, rather than to the entire tribe or clan as was a single woman. Feminist rhetoric that the only difference between a prostitute and a wife is that the wife has sold herself to only one man has a basis in history.
In other parts of her article, Ms. Post argues that marriage constitutes unjustifiable persecution of women on economic and other grounds.
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I also realize that, in many national and international legal circles, respect for the notion of sovereignty is at an all-time low. Therefore, in the end, whether or not creation of the International Criminal Court is "doing the right thing" the "right way" depends upon whether national sovereignty, itself, deserves preservation. I believe that it does.
Respect for national sovereignty is a bedrock principle of the UN Charter. Article 2, paragraph 7 of the United Nations Charter provides:
Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter . . . .
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Key among fundamental human rights are the rights to democratic self-governance and self-determination, the right to maintain diverse cultural and religious practices, and even the right, if people so choose, to "vote their conscience" and to establish governments based on religious principles. These rights are set forth in numerous UN pronouncements, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:
All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. . . . The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes . . . freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
These human rights and individual freedoms are best served if countries preserve their sovereignty and the right to govern their own domestic affairs. An autonomous international court will not be responsive to the culturally diverse peoples of the world. Moreover, governance by judges is inherently undemocratic. The power to determine the contours of domestic policies must be kept close to home – close to the people being governed.
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The United Nations was not designed to possess, let alone exercise, sovereign powers. The UN Charter does not give the UN the power to "enforce" human rights ideas upon sovereign nations. Rather, the Charter calls upon the United Nations merely to "promot[e] and encourag[e] respect for human rights." It would be a tragic irony if, in the name of "human rights," the nations of the world give potentially despotic power to a court that will be remote from the individual people of the world, but that will have the power to prosecute and punish them for "social crimes."
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