Words of Wisdom

In the end, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court made the only “legal” decision he could:  the ICC has no jurisdiction to act on the complaint of the Palestinian National Authority since Palestine is not a State and the Court is limited to accepting submissions by States.  The only case in favor of jurisdiction was always a set of political arguments in search of a valid legal vehicle that was never found...


The real problem here was Palestine’s unsuccessful effort to find a legal hole through which to pound a political peg.  A court that prosecutes individuals for criminal liability is the last place where one would countenance teleological and expansive notions of jurisdiction.  Those debates belong in political bodies, not in criminal courts.  This was, of course, part of Palestine’s larger campaign to find international institutions that might punch its ticket on the road to statehood, a project that has stalled out at the ICC and elsewhere.

David Davenport ^