Two international courts have been prominent in the news last week. The United Nations' most important legal body, the International Court of Justice (IJC) -- or the World Court as it is more popularly known -- issued an order to the state of Texas to delay the execution of five convicted Mexican murderers because it believes their rights to consular access may have been violated.
Texas may or may not pay attention. It did not pay attention when President George W. Bush told it the same thing, going instead to the Supreme Court, which ruled that Mr. Bush had no authority to do that. It seems unlikely that the state government will pay attention to the IJC either then, an indication, perhaps, of the kind of clout international courts have.
The World Court has at least a better reputation than the other international court that was in the news last week, the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is in the process of issuing a hasty warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of genocide committed in the blood-soaked province of Darfur.
Unlike the IJC's instruction to Texas, which can be dismissed as a kind of laughable liberalism, the charge against Mr. al-Bashir may have extremely serious consequences with no useful result. Barring a coup d'etat by internationally minded Sudanese army officers, if there are any such persons, Sudan's president is unlikely to ever stand in the dock of the International Criminal Court. Indeed, since its invention 10 years ago, in a world where crimes against humanity are commonplace, the ICC has issued only 12 such warrants and convicted no one, making its $100 million annual budget seem somewhat wasteful.
Its action this week is worse than wasteful. That Mr. al-Bashir deserves to face charges of genocide is screamingly obvious. But the court, while it may have technical jurisdiction over him, has no authority or executive ability to arrest him.
He, however, is eminently well placed to continue on his course, to intensify the genocide in Darfur. The result of the warrant will not bring Sudan's president to justice, but it has already compromised the delivery of international aid to Darfur and compromised the African Union's peacekeeping mission there. It is likely to cause Khartoum to step up the genocide -- it is as well to be hanged for a sheep as hanged for a lamb -- in an angry response to this attempt by the court to justify its futile existence. There will come a time to bring Mr. al-Bashir to justice, but it cannot be done now through an empty, counter-productive gesture by a court that has yet to prove it can serve a purpose.
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