Re-envisioning the International Criminal Court: does it matter if the United States continues to remain at the margins?

The challenges bedeviling the International Criminal Court are manifold. However, this dissertation breaks with the dominant narratives that view the Court as either an illegal or illegitimate institution or a tool of powerful states, that is, a Court purposefully designed to try “bad” political leaders who simply disagree with powerful states and/or their leaders. Instead, I argue that the reasons the Court is gasping for breath are rooted in its dysfunctional design one that was shaped by the same schema and actors that established the rules-based order. I contend that an unrepresentative international politico-legal order could neither have produced an uncontested Statute nor was it subsequently capable of coalescing the inchoate norms that undergird the Statute and the Court. Thus, the norm crystallization process stagnated and the foundational norms continue to be resisted and defied by States and Non-States Parties. I assert crucially that the nature of the global order determines whether, when, and how atrocity crimes are prosecuted. I adumbrate on two possible global order formation outcomes based off of Acharya Amitav’s “Global Concert” and “Regional Worlds” models. And regardless of which of these global orders comes to fruition, I argue that Court reforms must precede global order reconfiguration, the “rightsizing of geopolitical order,” or the successful building of political consensus by the major powers. Specifically, my recommendations target the redistribution of powers amongst the Court’s principal organs and office holders with a view to deepening the norm formation process and strengthening the Court’s institutional framework. I conclude that it is this strategic approach that will incentivize states to commit to a renewed vision and “probably” generate sufficient traction for the U.S. to reconsider its belligerent position and posture towards the Court.