Goldsmith Comes Out for an ICC referral

Harvard law prof and former Bush Administration chief of the Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith has a clever op-ed in the Washington Post today recommending that the U.S. support a Security Council referral of the Darfur atrocities to the ICC. Why clever? Because, as Goldsmith explains, the U.S. can support a referral to the ICC here because it would occur through the Security Council, which is what the U.S. wants anyway. And the ICC and its supporters can get an important case to demonstrate their effectiveness with the support of the U.S. It’s a win-win! It will be interesting to see whether this very reasonable analysis proves convincing to either side of the ICC divide.