The ”poisoned chalice” of international justice

While the United States has, since it founding, prided itself on the idea of justice for all, those principles have seldom found expression in the international realm, until relatively recently.

Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who would prosecute crimes at Nuremberg, would lay out the case for equal international justice, when he said in his opening statement “that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.  To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.”

Given this, the idea that the US would ever participate in any kind of international tribunal has always seemed remote.  Yet ten years ago, the International Criminal Court would come to be. And for all its struggles and limitations, it has started to gain its footing. American University Professor David Bosco, takes us through the history in Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics

My conversation with David Bosco: