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"The US never signed on to the world court."
Sorry. False.
The US has never ratified the Rome Statute of the INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT. The ICC deals with criminal charges against individuals under the new international criminal law (the Rome Statute, which defines and provides for punishment for the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes).
The INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE, the ICJ, the Court in question here, is a completely different entity. The US has very much, and for many years, submitted to the jurisdiction of that Court.
The ICJ deals with disputes between states involving alleged violations of international law that govern the actions of states, not of individuals. It applies the law that states have agreed to by signing international treaties.
The ICJ is the Court that heard the dispute between Canada and France over the international boundary between the islands of St-Pierre & Miquelon (in the Gulf of St. Lawrence) and Canada. It also heard the action brought by Nicaragua against the US for illegal acts of war committed by the US against Nicaragua -- illegal under the treaties that the US had voluntarily signed.
In the case in question here, the allegation was that the US had violated the 1963 Vienna convention on consular relations -- the right to contact consular officials from their own country. The US has voluntarily agreed to be bound by those obligations. By violating the obligations, it has essentially violated the sovereignty of Mexico, whose nationals were affected by the US's failure to honour its commitments.
Mexicans are not the only foreign nationals affected. A Canadian was executed in George Bush's Texas a short time before Bush became President. The man, Stanley Faulder, had been tried in a manner that outraged all sense of justice (the wealthy son of the murder victim paid for the prosecution and paid witnesses), and was never advised of his right to contact Canadian officials, who might have been able to assist him in getting a fair trial. Texas ignored the pleas from the likes of Madeleine Albright and Desmond Tutu to reopen the matter.
Canada, unsurprisingly, didn't have the guts to take the matter to the International Court of Justice. Good on Mexico for going after the rogue.
But here's the rub: states agree to be bound by the rulings of the ICJ, but if they just thumb their noses at the Court, there's nothing that can be done about it.
Imagine if you sued your neighbour for trampling your roses, got a judgment, and had no way of collecting it.
International law is an excellent thing. Now what we need is international law enforcement, so the bully isn't running the schoolground. Anybody who comes up with a way of making the US (or any other state) comply with its international legal obligations short of invading it and bombing it to smithereens -- that being the way the US itself has come up with so far -- well, would have to be super-human, at the moment. ;)
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