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POPE COULD FACE CHARGES UNDER INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

UNITED NATIONS, February 12, 2002 (LSN.ca) - With the International Criminal Court (ICC) only months away from entering into force according to the ICC Convenor William Pace, LifeSite spoke with Dr. Richard G. Wilkins, Professor of Law at Brigham Young University. Professor Wilkins, Managing Director of The World Family Policy Center, is a leading authority on the ICC, and regularly acts as legal counsel for pro-family NGOs (non-governmental organizations) at the United Nations.

Professor Wilkins, former Assistant to the US Solicitor General, told LifeSite that the ICC could eventually be used to try "the Pope or other religious leaders" since issues such as abortion and homosexuality would inevitably fall within the ICC's jurisdiction. Wilkins suggests that the possibility of the ICC's being abused in this fashion is the result of the ICC's troublesome regulations. "It currently is without sufficient checks and balances. It has the most powerful prosecutor ever with the vaguest criminal statute passed anywhere. The ICC leaves open to total discretion of the prosecutor and the court the determining of what the 'crimes' mean."

While the ICC claims to consider only "genocide," "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity," the definitions of those terms has been left so vague as to be open to virtually any interpretation. Dr. Wilkins gave LifeSite permission to publish his latest just-completed paper on the ICC wherein he warns, "Despite the best intentions of the Court founders, the Rome Statute transfers a vast amount of decision making authority from previously sovereign nations to an international court that will be remote (and unable to be controlled by or accountable) to the diverse peoples and cultures of the world."

"Under the Court's universal and complementary jurisdiction, the Court can and probably will attempt to change social norms in sometimes troublesome areas not admitting of a single, world-wide solution," writes Dr. Wilkins. "The International Criminal Court could well become the mechanism by which the Western innovation of judicially (rather than legislatively) crafted social policy - and its accompanying consequences - are exported to the rest of the world. Of all revolutions through the centuries, this is the quietest. Of all the attempts made over the years to foist one group's will on everyone else, this is the most subtle and simultaneously the most far-reaching - the world-wide constitutional convention no one knew about," he concludes.

See Professor Wilkins' paper in today's LifeSite Special Report:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/feb/020212a.html

See related LifeSite coverage:
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT IS 8 RATIFICATIONS AWAY FROM ENTERING INTO FORCE
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/feb/0202072 .html

See also
FINAL COURT OF APPEAL?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26424

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