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tionally protected rights are not absolute rights but tenta-

tive or conditional rights.  The likely result of that

concession will be that the U.S. Senate will face the pros-

pect next year of being asked to ratify an unconstitutional

treaty.

Conclusion

Given the foregoing discussion, it is clear that the

ICC conference in Rome will probably produce a treaty of

dubious merit and unconstitutional content.  Specifically,

the proposed International Criminal Court threatens to

diminish national sovereignty, interfere with peacekeeping

operations, produce selective and politicized justice, and

grow into a jurisdictional leviathan.  Perhaps most worri-

some, it appears that American defendants brought before the

court will not have many of the crucial protections enumer-

ated in the Bill of Rights.

The long list of problems that are likely to emerge

with the formation of the ICC--in any conceivable incarna-

tion--creates reasonable doubt about the wisdom of estab-

lishing the court in the first place.  The Clinton adminis-

tration ought to change course and decline to support the

treaty that emerges from the Rome conference.  If the admin-

istration proves unwilling to defend American sovereignty

and the constitutional rights of the American people, the

U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives will

likely have sufficient grounds to, respectively, refuse to

ratify and to fund the ICC.  If Congress goes ahead with the

treaty, however, it could open a Pandora's box of legal

mischief and political folly.

Notes

1.

ICC draft statute is available at www.un.org/icc.

2.  See, for example, Siddharth Varadarajan, "Imperial Impu-

nity, US Hampers World Criminal Court Plan," Times of India,

April 23, 1998; and Norman Dorsen and Morton Halperin,

"Justice after Genocide," Washington Post, May 13, 1998,

p. A17.

3.  Christopher Lockwood, "International: Nuremberg Bids to

House World War Crimes Court," Daily Telegraph (London),