Tonight, I will attend a presentation by Karen Shepherd at the United Nations Association of Utah (UNAU). It will be interesting to hear the tales of an excongress woman. I thought she did a great job in Congress, but her campaign manager ran an extremely negative re-election campaign, which cost her her office.



As to UNAU.org, I wanted to write up an article on the ICC (International Criminal Court) and repeat the plea that the US take a role in the court. Unfortunately, the more and more I read about the ICC, the more I realize what a dangerous thing the ICC could be.



The item that tip my opinion against the ICC was that the document sent by the UN for ratification is different from the document agreed upon during the Rome conference. From its inception, the UN has established the precendent that the laws enforced by the ICC will be capricious.



The natural tendency of the ICC will be to increase its scope of influence. There are international forces that would like to expand the ICC to handling environmental laws...especially laws that would muzzle those gas guzzling Americans. American Indians are hoping to appeal the court cases they lost to an international court, etc.. (In my brief search on the issue, I could not find any cases where an American Indian group wanted to appeal a ruling that they won to the ICC, just the ones they lost).



The troubling problem is that the ICC will undoubtably lead to the point of a Constitutional Crisis in the United States. The laws of the United States are all constrained by the Constitution. The Supreme Court is the ultimate court in the land. An International Court, however, would necessarily have jurisdiction over the Supreme Court.



Roe v. Wade provides a prime example of how the ICC could create a Constitutional crisis. There are many people in the world who believe that abortion is akin to murder. Imagine for a moment that a pro-life movement develops in the International community. A pro lifer on the ICC would be horrified by abortion in the US and feel obligated to denouce Roe v. Wade as an act of genocide.



Regardless of your view on abortion, I hope it apparent the problems that this would cause. The ultimate court of the land would be out of sync with the ultimate court of the world.



If there were some way to have an ICC that was actually restricted in its jurisdiction, I would favor the idea. However, I find myself seeing the otherside of the issue, and realize that the US is stuck in a situation where there is no way that it could support the permanently standing International Criminal Court.