Trump and his ilk imagine a world without international law – but they will not achieve it | Philippe Sands

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

57% : As Giuliano da Empoli articulates it in his book The Hour of the Predator, the new populist class of political predators and digital conquistadors has made an enemy not just of lawyers, but of their rules and institutions, their courts and their judges, the post-1945 commitment to rules on free trade, on the rights of individuals and groups, and on the use of force.
49% : Nineteen forty-five was a pivotal moment in international law, marking the founding of the United Nations and the International Military Tribunal to investigate war crimes committed during the second world war.
47% : The rules set forth in the 1949 Geneva conventions and their 1977 protocols on the protection of civilians in times of armed conflict, did not cease to have their writ in the face of attacks on civilians in Ukraine, in Israel on 7 October, or in Gaza subsequently, or in parts of Sudan.And while some rules are undoubtedly being flouted, and gravely so, the vast majority of the rules of international law continue to be respected and to operate and apply in a manner that is fully effective.
46% : That view was premised on two incidents: Israel’s launch of a missile strike on a building that hosted Hamas officials in Qatar; and the flight of 19 Russian drones into Polish airspace.
46% : In recent months, states have agreed to negotiate a new UN convention on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity, and they adopted a new treaty to create the first international tribunal on the crime of aggression since Nuremberg, in relation to Russia’s illegal occupation of Ukraine.In a post-rules world, you might also expect international courts and tribunals to be in a state of collapse or disappearance.
44% : That approach gave us Iraq and the palaver over the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol, and so many other disasters.
38% : Given what is happening in Ukraine, and in Israel/Palestine, and in Sudan, among other places, it is hard to disagree with Yale professor Oona Hathaway who said this month that the protection of civilians under international humanitarian law is being “eroded to the point of threatening to lose all meaning”.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.