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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
Seattle, WA, United States, 12/18/2008 - Debatepedia's community completed on November 17th the most comprehensive pro/con guide available on whether the United States and other non-member states should join the International Criminal Court (ICC).
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With the election of Barack Obama, the United States is once again faced with the question of whether to ratify the Rome Treaty and join the International Criminal Court. This important choice comes after the Clinton administration ultimately rejected the Rome Treaty in 1998 and after 8 years of bitter opposition by the Bush administration to the court. Nevertheless, the war crimes court was established in 2002, and with 108 member states and a growing list of successes, advocates of the court are ramping up their call for the US to join. At a moment when the president-elect Obama must fully deliberate and form a position on the ICC, Debatepedia has created the most comprehensive break-down of the pros and cons to date. With 13 sub-debate sections, 68 pros and cons, and a comprehensive body of supporting quotations from the primary scholars and leaders involved, Debatepedia’s ICC article acts as a definitive resource for the Obama team and the American public to deliberate and decide. Will the United States join the International Criminal Court? See the article link below:
Here are some of the more compelling arguments in Debatepedia's article:
PRO: ICC is the best tool for fighting genocide and war crimes Roger Cohen. "A Court for a New America". New York Times. 3 Dec. 2008 - "After the terrible decade of the 1990s, with its genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda and the loss there of a million lives while the United States and its allies dithered, it is unconscionable that America not stand with the institution that constitutes the most effective legal deterrent to such crimes [...] The International Criminal Court has filed charges against alleged war criminals in Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda and Sudan since it started work in 2002. The first trial, involving a Congolese warlord, Thomas Lubanga, is set to begin in January."
CON: Case-by-case approach is superior to ICC in crises John R. Bolton. "The United States and the International Criminal Court". Remarks to the Federalist Society. 14 Nov. 2002 - "it is by no means clear that "justice" as defined by the Court and Prosecutor is always consistent with the attainable political resolution of serious political and military disputes. It may be, or it may not be. Human conflict teaches that, much to the dismay of moralists and legal theoreticians, mortal policy makers often must make tradeoffs among inconsistent objectives. This can be a painful and unpleasant realization, confronting us as it does with the irritating facts of human complexity, contradiction, and imperfection [...] Accumulated experience strongly favors a case-by-case approach, politically and legally, rather than the inevitable resort to adjudication. Circumstances differ, and circumstances matter. Atrocities, whether in international wars or in domestic contexts, are by definition uniquely horrible in their own times and places."
Debatepedia is a global wiki encyclopedia of public debates, pro and con arguments, and supporting quotations. A project of the International Debate Education Association (IDEA), Debatepedia is something like "the Wikipedia of debates". It aims to engage you and other citizen-editors in centralizing your original arguments - as well as arguments and quotations found in millions articles, essays, and books - into a single encyclopedia. This helps you and other citizens better weigh the pros and cons in important public debates and make decisions.
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