The war on international justice

Last month, the White House issued an executive order to apply terrorism-style sanctions such as bank account and asset seizure orders against members of the International Criminal Court (ICC), presumably as a response to express disapproval of a war crimes investigation related to events in Afghanistan. William Burke-White, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and policy advisor who worked at State Department under the Obama administration, joins Departures this week to talk about these sanctions against the ICC and other issues surrounding the declining support for international legal institutions seen during the past four years of the Trump administration. Prof. Burke-White shares his insights about how the effort to construct global legal structures to put an end to impunity have crashed up against the prerogatives of power, and why the United States, especially when competing with a rising China, should have a strong interest to support international rule of law and strengthen these systems while we still have the ability to influence the process.