The problem should be obvious. International legal relationships and jurisdictional claims are already complex enough in an increasingly interdependent world. Using domestic criminal justice systems as a means of achieving foreign policy ends or, even worse, allowing individual magistrates to use their courts on a freelance basis makes global dispute resolution difficult — if not impossible — even when countless innocent lives are very much at stake, as in Darfur.<\/p>\n
And, of course, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.<\/p>\n
African leaders, evidently unimpressed with Europe’s claims of moral authority, have condemned the indictments, and Rwandan President Paul Kagame (himself a potential target of a future legal action) has suggested that his own country might proceed against Europeans — specifically against French military officers who advised the previous, genocidal Rwandan government — in response to the Spanish and French indictments.<\/p>\n
What we are seeing is not the birth of a global rule of law but a type of worldwide judicial anarchy. Spain’s judges should not be driving foreign policy at the United Nations — but they are.<\/p>\n