Democracy & Justice

The architecture of international justice ~ the rules, norms, and institutions that have guided efforts to hold accountable the perpetrators of grave crimes - was largely built upon the presumption that the world was moving toward greater respect for democracy and human rights.

- James A. Goldston

To be sure, progress was not linear: there were steps sideways and backward. But from the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials, which prosecuted German and Japanese perpetrators after World War II, to the adoption in 1998 of the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), the general trajectory was proceeding in the direction of accountability. Despite their flaws and crimes, some of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracies helped lead the push for justice in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.

But recent events have reversed this trend. Authoritarian leaders who scorn human rights have come to power in several democracies, including the United States. Donald Trump's election as US president in 2016, and his reelection in 2024, have been particularly concerning. Already under Trump's second administration, the US — whose leadership of the international justice system is as essential as it has been inconsistent - has gone so far as to impose sanctions on the ICC’s prosecutor, two deputy prosecutors, and six of its judges.

The US is not the only democracy under pressure from authoritarian forces that fear any form of accountability.