The US ought to submit to the jurisdiction of an international court designed to prosecute CAH.

Let's Begin. "When making decisions, the United States ultimately has to consider what is best for its citizens, and then the world. The U.S. was founded to create a free land for those who resided within it. It is the duty of the government to make sure that its people remain safe at all times." Because I agree with this statement made by Franklin Roosevelt I must negate the following resolution. Resolved: The United States ought to submit to the jurisdiction of an international court designed to prosecute crimes against humanity. To clarify in today's debate the negative will offer definitions of key terms and phrases from Merriam-Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. Ought: to be bound in duty or by moral obligation. To submit: to yield oneself to the authority or will of another. Crimes against humanity: murder, extermination, enslavement, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated. The negative will value human rights in today's debate. Human Rights are the Paramount Human Value and thus are intrinsically valuable. Without Human Rights any society ceases to be legitimate and humanity itself will degrade into a Hobbesian state of nature. As you will see in my contentions the ICC's unchecked power will prevent it from properly upholding human rights. There is no way an unchecked international institution can properly uphold human rights. The negative criterion in today's debate will be Cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is the view that one's primary moral obligations are directed to all human beings and political arrangements should faithfully reflect this universal moral obligation. As I will show in my case an International Court cannot protect human rights in any nation due to its basically unchecked power. Thus the US has a duty to all mankind through Cosmopolitanism that requires it to not enter the world court and in the end do a service to all humanity. The negative will offer the following three contentions in today's debate: Contention 1: The ICC's Unchecked Power Leads to Abuse. Contention 2: The ICC Fails Because it Ignores Local Context. Contention 3: Hybrid Courts are Better than the ICC Now back to my first contention. The ICC's Unchecked Power Leads to Abuse. Sub Point A: The ICC Has No Checks and Balances. C.T. Cline writes in "Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems" : The ICC is an institution that lacks checks and balances. The court combines investigation, prosecution, trial, and appeal. It is monolithic and beyond the control of the citizenry or of any counteracting governmental branch. It is not subject to direct U.N. Security Council oversight, as are the other tribunals such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which the United States supports. Moreover, the court interprets its own charter with no meaningful external review. There is no meaningful outside control to curb or rein in possible excesses. This concept is foreign to Americans because the U.S. system of government is founded on the principle of checks and balances, with each branch of government--legislative, executive, judicial--fulfilling a role. Congress passes the laws, the executive enforces the laws, and the courts interpret the laws. Sub Point B: Unchecked Power Leads to Abuse. Cline continues: More than 200 years ago, the American founding fathers believed that unchecked power was open to abuse. Writing in the Federalist Papers, James Madison [explains] "It may be a reflection on human nature," he wrote, "that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?" Americans mindful of the shortcomings of human nature may find a "super court" standing supreme and unaccountable at the pinnacle of international judgment worrisome and unacceptable. One must look to examples of dictators, like Saddam Hussein. Their unchecked power leads to rights deprivations, atrocious acts and unnecessary violence. While I am not comparing the ICC to a dictator, we have empirical evidence that unchecked power leads to abuse. On to my second contention. The ICC Fails Because it Ignores Local Context. Etelle Higgonet, from the Human Rights Watch writes: The ICC will face linguistic and cultural obstacles in reaching out to local audiences, and may need to rely on entities better able to connect to local populations. The ICC Statute places an emphasis on outreach, for instance, in its provision for the possibility of the Court sitting regionally. Although the ICC's seat is in The Hague, Article 3 of the Rome Statute allows for the ICC to move to another seat in certain circumstances, presumably to the country or region where the atrocities took place. From the perspective of most people in post-atrocity countries, the ICC will probably remain mysterious: staffed by foreigners, working in a distant land, in languages that few understand, and applying previously unheard-of laws. Notwithstanding provisions in the ICC Statute on stronger victim participation and Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo's stated commitment to communicate with concerned populations, the ICC could appear even more like a deus ex machina than the ad hoc tribunals, yet further removed from local realities. And now for my final contention. Hybrid Courts are Better than the ICC. Higgonet continues: The paper's central thesis is that hybrids draw upon both the strengths of international justice and the benefits of local prosecutions. On one hand, hybrids can harness the credibility of international law and the legitimacy of international institutions, which can lend hybrid courts a degree of authority as a fair mechanism for holding perpetrators accountable. On the other hand, hybrids can be structured to tap into domestic expertise, connect with local populations, and rebuild national judicial systems, creating a training ground for rule of law values. They also avoid the staggering costs of purely international courts. By integrating local norms, hybrid courts can bring culturally adapted justice to the people that international courts purport to serve but cannot reach; they can bridge the divide between remote, wealthy international jurists and third world victims of war crimes. Therefore I urge a negative ballot.