Legal Commentary

U.S. Still Won?t Join International Criminal Court

By Jonathan H. Adler

Via Julian Ku at Opinio Juris comes news that the Obama Administration has no plans to submit the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to the Senate for ratificaiton.  Prof. Ku comments:

This is not exactly a surprise, but it shows just how far the U.S. is from the Rome Statute. If President Obama and his sort-of supermajority in Congress do not wish to join the ICC, then it is hard to imagine the U.S. joining during a future Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney administration.  This doesn?t exactly bother me. But this raw political fact suggests that the U.S. failure to join the ICC is rooted in deeper political and structural concerns than partisan politics and ideology.

Indeed, if the Obama Administration is not even willing to sign the ICC treaty, the prospects of U.S. participation in the foreseeable future would appear to be quite small.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on February 07, 2010 (boomark / email).