The International Criminal Court bash fest is getting ever more frenetic in Washington and among the law-shredding members of the Netanyahu government in Israel. Last month, the Trump administration smacked sanctions on judicial members Kimberly Prost of Canada and Nicolas Guillou of France via Executive Order 14203. Prosecutors also received a chastening, sanctioning experience, including Nazhat Shameem Khan of Fiji and Mame Mandiaye Niang of Senegal.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who occupies more administrative posts than he can identify, confirmed the line of his boss, President Donald J. Trump. The ICC was “a national security threat that had been an instrument for lawfare against the United States and our close ally Israel.” In an August 20 press statement, Rubio insisted that the individuals in question had sought to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute U.S. and Israeli nationals “without the consent of either nation.” While Rubio has an undergraduate acquaintance with the principle of consent regarding the jurisdiction of the court, he should also be aware that the involvement of the ICC can still take place regarding a non-signatory to the Rome Statute in certain cases.

In the case of the murder, mayhem, and slaughter being visited upon Palestinians by the Israeli forces, the ICC has assumed jurisdiction given Palestinian ratification of the treaty. As the alleged breaches of humanitarian law have taken place on Palestinian soil, Israel has fallen within the court’s investigative and judicial scope. In November 2024, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant were issued with arrest warrants. Rubio, nonetheless, repeats the usual charge sheet and insists that actions are necessary “to protect our troops, our sovereignty, and our allies from the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions.” With depths of sheer cravenness, he insists that signatories to the Rome Statute appreciate that the freedom of many of the ratifiers “was purchased at the price of great American sacrifices.”

The response from the ICC to such head-spinning conspiracy could do no more than summarise the important point: that the sanctions were “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution.” The move was “also an affront against the Court’s States Parties, the rules-based international order and, above all, millions of innocent victims across the world.” With admirable pluck, the body went on to declare that it would persist in “fulfilling its mandate, undeterred, in strict accordance with its legal framework as adopted by the State Parties and without regard to any restriction, pressure or threat.”

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric also told the press that the decision by Washington imposed “severe impediments on the functioning of the office of the prosecutor and respect for all the situations that are currently before the court.”

Such impositions, and the broader attempt to place the U.S. outside the gravitational pull of the ICC, has become routine. American exceptionalism is always cited as the mainstay principle in doing so, despite the fact that drafting the original Rome Statute involved considerable interest from the American legal fraternity. The first Trump administration saw the issuing of Executive Order 13928 in June 2020, which imposed travel and financial sanctions on ICC personnel and their family members. President Joe Biden revoked the measure in April 2021, with his Secretary of State Antony Blinken reasoning that the order had been “inappropriate and ineffective.”

Last year, the House of Representatives passed the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, which blustered against international law while shielding U.S. citizens and entities, along with non-U.S. citizens lawfully resident in the country. Were the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute such “protected” persons, the president would “impose visa- and property-blocking sanctions against the foreign persons that engaged in or materially insisted in such actions.” Sanctions blocking the visas of immediate family members of those targeted would also be implemented.

In January this year, the same bill failed by 54-45 votes to pass, though Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could still offer considerable support for the instrument. “However, as much as I oppose the ICC bias against Israel, as much as I want to see that institution drastically reformed and reshaped, the bill before us is poorly drafted and deeply problematic.”

In February, Trump reprised his role as assaulter-in-chief of the ICC by issuing Executive Order 14203, reviving the provisions of the moribund Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act. He warned that the Court’s “recent actions against Israel and the United States set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel, including active service members of the Armed Forces, by exposing them to harassment, abuse, and possible arrest.” Accordingly, any non-American person or organisation can be sanctioned if they directly engage in any actions on the part of the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute a “protected person” without consent of that individual’s country or nationality. (Such persons are defined as U.S. nationals and U.S. military personnel, including persons who are citizens or lawful residents of a U.S. NATO ally or “major non-NATO ally.”)

Anyone supplying material assistance, including sponsorship, financial, material, or technological assistance to the Court’s activities, can also be sanctioned. As before, these can take the form of blocking assets within the U.S. and bans on entry into the U.S. for any sanctioned persons, including their families. Most prominently on the list is ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan.

While criticism of these battering responses from Trump has been forthcoming from various Rome Statute member states, they constitute a mere smattering. Trump’s hostility to the regime of international justice and accountability is one shared, overtly or otherwise, by various allies and adversaries. Netanyahu knows, for instance, that the ICC arrest warrant will carry no truck in certain countries, however sentimental they claim to be about international humanitarian law.

France’s Foreign Ministry is notably adamant that he is immune from arrest, as Israel is not a party to the ICC. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stoutly flouted the warrant by inviting Netanyahu to Budapest and also announcing his country’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, preferring a certain obliqueness, called the ICC decision “unfortunate,” undermining “its authority in other cases when it equates the elected representatives of a democratic state with the leaders of an Islamist terrorist organization.” With supporters like these, the blunting and sundering of international judicial processes is always assured.