[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 3, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E13-E14]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          NO TO A WORLD COURT

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. DOUG BEREUTER

                              of nebraska

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, January 3, 2001

  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member would ask his colleagues to 
consider carefully and submit the following editorial from the December 
30, 2000, edition of the Omaha World-

[[Page E14]]

Herald, entitled ``No to a World Court'' into the Congressional Record.

              [From the Omaha World-Herald, Dec. 20, 2000]

                          No to a World Court

       America's political leaders are being wooed with a siren 
     song they would do well to resist. Foreign governments, 
     political activists and academics are sounding that song with 
     the aim of enticing the United States into ratifying a treaty 
     to create an International Criminal Court. The song goes 
     something like this:
       Turn away from old notions. Turn away from your antiquated 
     allegiance to national sovereignty. Embrace a higher moral 
     order. Recognize that if nations are to promote true justice, 
     they must swallow their pride and bow to a higher authority, 
     a court, that will decide questions of war crimes and 
     genocide and see that wrongdoers receive the punishment they 
     deserve.
       If a treaty establishing the court is approved by 60 
     nations, the world would finally have a permanent 
     international forum with the authority to prosecute 
     masterminds of genocide and war crimes.
       It is superficially appealing. But behind the high-minded 
     sentiments lies an agenda hostile to U.S. interests.
       Foreign governments and activists organizations have sent 
     strong indications that they envision the court largely as a 
     tool for reining in the assertion of U.S. power. Through its 
     ability to prosecute American officials and military people, 
     the court would give anti-American critics a powerful new 
     instrument for undermining U.S. military operations and 
     intimidating U.S. leaders from launching future ones.
       Creation of the court would also aid its boosters in their 
     efforts to create a new standard for military operations, an 
     ``enlightened'' standard that would, in effect, severely 
     restrict U.S. military options under threat of international 
     prosecution.
       The eagerness of international activists to promote such 
     extravagant legal claims was demonstrated this year when 
     human rights groups tried unsuccessfully to haul NATO 
     officials before an international tribunal investigating war 
     crimes from the Yugoslav civil war. The activists claimed, 
     without foundation, that NATO's 1999 bombing campaign 
     violated international law in reckless disregard for 
     civilians.
       That air campaign, ironically, was marked not be 
     callousness on the part of NATO officials but by the 
     extraordinary lengths to which they sought to minimize 
     casualties, civilian as well as military. Regrettable losses 
     of civilian life occurred nonetheless, fanning the criticism 
     of such interventions.
       As if all this weren't enough, the proposed procedures for 
     the International Criminal Court would place it in direct 
     opposition to civil liberties guaranteed under the U.S. 
     Constitution. Proceedings before the court would allow no 
     trial by jury, no right to a trial without long delays, no 
     right of the defendant to confront witnesses, no prohibition 
     against extensive hearsay evidence and no appeals.
       David Rivkin and Lee Casey, two American attorneys with 
     extensive experience in international law, note that the 
     court would serve as ``police, prosecutor, judge, jury and 
     jailer,'' with no countervailing authority to check its 
     power.
       Rivkin and Casey also point out that trying Americans under 
     such conditions was precisely the sort of injustice that 
     Thomas Jefferson warned against in the Declaration of 
     Independence more than 200 years ago.
       In listing the injustices committed by the British 
     government, the Declaration heaped particular scorn on the 
     way Americans had been abused by British vice-admiralty 
     courts. Such courts, the Declaration said, had subjected 
     American defendants ``to a jurisdiction foreign to our 
     constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws.'' The courts 
     denied people ``the benefits of Trial by Jury'' and involved 
     transporting them ``beyond Seas to be tried for pretended 
     offenses.''
       When the U.S. Constitution was drafted in the late 1780s, 
     it specifically required that criminal trials be by jury and 
     held in the state and district where the crime was committed.
       The appropriate course for the United States would be to 
     continue supporting international courts on an ad hoc basis, 
     such as the Yugoslav tribunal, to meet the needs of 
     particular situations. Such bodies have powers far more 
     modest than that of the proposed court.
       A chorus of foreign governments, advocacy groups and 
     commentators has a far different agenda, however. They are 
     urging the United States to sign and ratify the treaty 
     creating the International Criminal Court. To hinder the 
     court's creation, they say, would be the opposite of 
     progressive.
       But the siren song ought to be resisted. Otherwise, by 
     bowing to foolhardy legal restrictions, the United States 
     would be handing its clever critics the very chains with 
     which they would bind this country. And so we would lose some 
     of our ability to defend not only our own interests but the 
     freedoms of others.

     

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