Ratify or Reject: Examining the United States' Opposition to the International Criminal Court

Abstract

Ours is a time of unparalleled prosperity and peace, of hope in humankind and its seemingly limitless ability to race toward new horizons.Yet Charles Dickens's appellation has never rung so true: It is the best and worst of times.'The severity of mass killings in our own.time,on the eve of the millennium, reflects how little we know of ourselves, of our neighbors, and of our future.Neither our faith in the impressive march of technology nor our other aspirations... can overshadow the grotesque reality of the massacres that characterize civilization, or the lack thereof, in today's troubled world. 2 The international community has plunged into this grotesque morass and emerged with hope in the form of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.In July 1998, an overwhelming majority of the world's nations voted for the Rome Statute's version of the International Criminal Court ("the Court").Yet to a few nations, the Rome Statute represented an acrid antidote to the