In the spotlight: the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court

Recently, the International Criminal Court (‘ICC’ or ‘the Court’) has increasingly found itself in the political spotlight. On 10 September John Bolton, a United States National Security Adviser, attacked the Court as ‘illegitimate’ and claimed that ‘for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead.’ Donald Trump reinforced those contentions in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on 24 September when he asserted that ‘the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy and no authority.’ This blog post will examine the context of Bolton and Trump’s statements about the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court in an effort to determine whether they were challenging its legitimacy vis-à-vis the United States or if they meant to question its overall legitimacy. It finds that the Court’s overall legitimacy is not in question but that it is very limited in how it can exert jurisdiction over the United States.