The United States Should Submit to the ICC to prosecute crimes against humanity

Resolved : The United States ought to submit to the jurisdiction of an international court designed to prosecute crimes against humanity. I negate the resolution •Submit - verb – to defer to another's judgment , opinion, decision etc. •Jurisdiction – noun – the right, power or authority to administer justice by hearing and determining controversies. •Prosecute – verb – to institute legal proceedings against (a person) •Ought - verb – used to indicate moral obligation or duty •Crime Against Humanity - Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime. ( Nuremberg Trials) The treaty that established the International Criminal Court, or the ICC runs counter to the values on which the United States was founded and should not be supported. This treaty threatens the idea of self – government which leads to my value premise. My value premise is national sovereignty or the right of the government to uphold itself. In the resolution, the definition of submit blatantly defies the premise of national sovereignty. By submitting to the International Criminal Court, countries under the jurisdiction of the ICC are defying their own national sovereignty. My first contention is that the ICC's powers are open to abuse. The crimes under the jurisdiction of the ICC are broadly defined and could subject individuals to penalties of up to life imprisonment for actions that never were thought punishable on the international level before. Cases could be brought before the court based upon the complaint of any country that ratifies the ICC or the initiative of the court's prosecutor – an international independent counsel. Once indicted , individual defendants would be tried by a bench of judges chosen by the ICC States Parties. As an institution the ICC would act as police, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer prohibiting the ability of a fair trial. All of these functions would be performed by its staff or under its supervision with only bureaucratic divisions of authority. The court would be the sole judge of its own power and there would be no process to appeal its decisions, however irrational or unjust those might be. Unfortunately, merely refusing to join the Rome Treaty will not protect Americans from the ICC's reach. In an astonishing break with the accepted norms of international law, the Rome Treaty would extend the ICC's jurisdiction to the citizens of countries that have not signed and ratified the treaty. Therefore having no benefits when submitted to such jurisdiction. My second contention is that the ICC violates the Constitution. The ICC violates constitutional principles. The failure of the ICC treaty to adopt the minimum guarantees of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights is , in fact, one of the principal reasons as to why the United States has not joined the ICC treaty regime. As the U.S. Supreme Court recently suggested in the United States v. Balsys the United States cannot participate in or facilitate a criminal trial under its own authority even in part unless the Constitution's guarantees are preserved. If , however, the United States were to join the ICC treaty regime, the prosecutions undertaken by the court, whether involving the actions of Americans in the United States or overseas, would be "as much on behalf of the United States as of" any other State Part. Since the guarantees of the bill of rights would not be available in the ICC, the United States could not participate in, or facilitate any such court. United States participation in the ICC treaty regime would also be unconstitutional because it would allow the trial of American citizens for crimes committed on American soil, which are otherwise entirely within the judicial power of the United States. The Supreme Court has long held that only the courts of the United States, as established under the Constitution, can try such offenses. The Supreme Court made this clear in the landmark Civil War case of Ex parte Milligan. In that case, the court reversed a civilian's conviction in a military tribunal, which did not provide the guarantees of the Bill of Rights, holding that every trial involves the exercise of judicial power and that the military court in question could exercise no part of the judicial power of the country. This reasoning is equally applicable to the ICC. My third and final contention is that the ICC contradicts American principles. The declaration of independence, which h articulates the principles that justify the American Republic's very existence, listed the offenses of the king and parliament that required separation from England, revolution and war. Prominent among those offenses were accusations that Britain had (1) subjected Americans to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws (2) deprived us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury and (3) transported us beyond the seas to be tried for pretended offences. These provisions referred to the British practice of prosecuting Americans in vice admiralty courts for criminal violations of the navigation and trade laws. Like the ICC, these courts followed the civil law, inquisitorial system. Convictions of course, could be obtained far more easily from these tribunals than from uncooperative colonial juries. The U.S. Constitution's Framers sought to eliminate forever the danger that Americans might again be surrendered to a foreign power for trial by specifically requiring that criminal trials be by jury and conducted in the same state and district in which the crime was perpetrated. In addition, trying to rule on a person outside of the nation of where they committed the crime is irrational. It is irrational to try a criminal who commited a crime in one country to be tried in a panel that have laws dissimilar to each other. Take for example petty larceny. If I were to steal a loaf of bread in the U.S I might not even get caught – if I were to do the same in India, I could have my hand cut off. In addition, when the individual countries pick punishments on their societal norms that is personal, individual justice in their eyes. I hold this same criterion and value as you can see if the individual country picks the punishment, justice can be sought. The armies of this country can protect these freedoms, and the US and the ICC combined cannot, thus upholding my value premise that the resolution clearly violates the terms of national sovereignty a key basis of democratic nations. I look forward to my opponents critique of my argument and rebuttal of theirs. Urge a con vote.