The International Criminal Court and the state of the American exception

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511974953.003

3 - The International Criminal Court and the state of the American exception

from PART 1 - International criminal justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2011

Jason Ralph

Edited by

Adam Crawford

Show author details

Jason Ralph: Affiliation:
University of Leeds
Adam Crawford: Affiliation:
University of Leeds

Book contents

Get access

Summary

It is almost a cliché to argue that while European governments favour a world order based on international law and organisation, Americans see international society as an epiphenomenon of American power. Robert Kagan (2003: 3) famously captured this when, at the height of the Iraq War controversy, he wrote that ‘Americans are from Mars and the Europeans are from Venus’. Where the latter were ‘realising Immanuel Kant's “perpetual peace”’, the former was ‘mired in history, exercising power in an anarchic Hobbesian world where international law and rules are unreliable, and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might’. Chastened by what America found (or did not find) in Iraq, Kagan seemingly stepped back from some of the implications of this analysis. The USA, he concluded, could not and should not ignore the question of legitimacy and the role that law played in providing that. The USA must realise, moreover, that it could not claim legitimacy by acting unilaterally in its self-interest and without reference to the greater good (Kagan 2004). Yet even after recognising this, Kagan argued, the two continents would remain politically divided. That schism might not reflect the Hobbesian–Kantian divide as implied in his earlier work.

Type: Chapter
Information: International and Comparative Criminal Justice and Urban Governance
Convergence and Divergence in Global, National and Local Settings
, pp. 67 - 85

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511974953.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abromowitz, M. and Lynch, C. (2008) ‘Darfur killings soften Bush's opposition to International Court’, Washington Post, 12 October.Google Scholar

Bellinger, J. (2008a) Remarks to the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, 25 April 2008, www.cfr.org.

Bellinger, J. (2008b) Remarks at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 14 November 2008, www.cfr.org/.

Borger, J. (2008) ‘Bashir refuses to hand over suspects to ICC. Aid workers prepare for possible state backlash’, The Guardian, 11 July.Google Scholar

Boustany, N. (2007) ‘Official floats possibility of assistance to Hague Court’, Washington Post, 12 June.Google Scholar

Burns, N. (2005) US State Department Briefing by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, 1 April.

Deudney, D. (2007) Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar

Duval Smith, A. (2008) ‘Britain blocks prosecution of Sudan's ruler', The Guardian, 14 September.Google Scholar

Evans, G. (2008) New ICC Prosecution: Opportunities and Risks for Peace in Sudan, International Crisis Group Press Release, 14 July 2008.Google Scholar

Gedda, B. (2008) ‘Quo vadis, ICC?’, www.ssrc.org/blogs/darfur/2008/07/04/quo-vadis-icc/.

Glassborow, K. (2009) ‘Bashir “becoming burden” for Khartoum’, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 13 March 2009, www.iwpr.net/EN-acr-f-350918.Google Scholar

Graham, F. (2009) ‘Put peace before justice’, New York Times, 3 February.Google Scholar

Grossman, M. (2002) ‘American foreign policy and the International Criminal Court’, Remarks to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC, 6 May 2002, www.state.gov/p/9949.htm.Google Scholar

Kagan, R. (2003) Paradise and Power: American and European in the New World Order, London: Atlantic Books.Google Scholar

Kagan, R. (2004) ‘America's crisis of legitimacy’, Foreign Affairs, 83(2), 65–87.CrossRef Google Scholar

Kaul, H.-P. (2002) ‘Preconditions to the exercise of jurisdiction’ in Cassese, Antonio, Gaeta, Paola and Jones, John R. W. D. (eds.), The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: A Commentary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 583–616.Google Scholar

Kissinger, H. (2001) ‘The pitfalls of universal jurisdiction’, Foreign Affairs, 80, 86–96.CrossRef Google Scholar

Lynch, C. (2008) ‘Indictment of Sudanese leader seen as threat to peacekeepers’, The Washington Post, 20 July.Google Scholar

Lynch, C. (2009) ‘Sudan retains clout while charges loom’, Washington Post, 9 February.

Natsios, A. (2008) ‘A disaster in the making’, www.ssrc.org/blogs/darfur/2008/07/12/a-disaster-in-the-making/.

Norris, J., Sullivan, D. and Prendergast, J. (2008) The Merits of Justice, Enough Project, Strategy Paper35, www.enoughproject.org/files/press_kit/action/country_analysis_specific_reports_and_papers/Sudan/The-Merits-of-Justice-7.08.pdf.Google Scholar

Odysseos, L. and Petito, F. (2007) (eds.) The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order, London: Routledge.Google Scholar

Office of the Prosecutor (2008) ‘Attacks on peacekeepers will not be tolerated’, Press Release, 20 November 2008, www.icc-cpi.int.

Power, S. (2000) ‘The United States and genocide law’ in Sewall, S. B. and Kaysen, C. (eds.), The United States and the International Criminal Court, London: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 165–78.Google Scholar

Prosper, P.-R. (2005) ‘Darfur, war crimes, the ICC and the quest for justice’, Brookings Briefing, The Brookings Institute, 25 February 2005, www.brookings.edu/comm/events/20050225.pdf.Google Scholar

Ralph, J. (2007) Defending the Society of States: Why America Opposes the International Criminal Court and its Vision of World Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Ralph, J. (2009) ‘The laws of war and the state of the American exception’, Review of International Studies, 35(3), 631–49.CrossRef Google Scholar

Scheffer, D. J. (1999) ‘International Criminal Court: the challenge of jurisdiction’, Address to Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, Washington DC, 26 March 1999, www.state.gov/documents/organization/6552.docGoogle Scholar

Schmitt, C. (2003) The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (translated and annotated by G. L. Ulmen), New York: Telos Press Publishing.Google Scholar

Schmitt, C. (2005) Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Scowcroft, B. (2002) ‘Don't attack Iraq’, Wall Street Journal, 15 August.Google Scholar

Slaughter, A. -M. (2009) ‘Wilsonianism in the twenty-first century’ in Ikenberry, G. J., Knock, T. J., Slaughter, A. -M. and Smith, T., The Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the Twenty-first Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 89–117.Google Scholar

Smith, T. (2009) ‘Wilsonianism after Iraq: The end of liberal internationalism?’ in Ikenberry, G. J., Knock, T. J., Slaughter, A.-M. and Smith, T., The Crisis of American Foreign Policy. Wilsonianism in the Twenty-first Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 53–88.Google Scholar

Spiro, P. J. (2000) ‘The new sovereigntists: American exceptionalism and its false prophets’, Foreign Affairs, 79, 9–15.CrossRef Google Scholar

Steele, J. (2008) ‘The ICC should not indict Omar al-Bashir’, The Guardian, 11 July.Google Scholar

Tisdall, S. (2008) ‘Man blamed for Darfur says I am at peace with myself’, The Guardian, 4 December.Google Scholar

Waal, A. (2009) ‘The ICC, Sudan and the crisis of human rights’, African Arguments, March, http://africanarguments.org/.Google Scholar

Ward, J. and Pisik, B. (2009) ‘Obama backs indictment of Sudan leader’, Washington Times, 5 February.Google Scholar