Over at Opinio Juris, some first-wave discussion of the agreement on the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the crime of aggression. Kevin Jon Heller and Julian Ku – not sparring, but instead trying to give an initial read on the deal. A great deal of discussion is about to ensue over this deal, stay tuned at Opinio Juris. (I myself think the attempt to judicialize aggression is as much madness as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and wonder, to boot, whether the surest sign of an impending resurgence of deeply dangerous great power multipolar rivalries is a historical overreach of international law.)
But to get a sense of what the deal is as it is being announced, check in at Opinio Juris. Also Joanna Harrington’s posts at EJILTalk. And for background, two good sources, among others, are the recent Council on Foreign Relations report offering recommendations to the US prior to the ICC review conference, authored by former DOS lawyer and visiting Cardozo law professor Vijay Padmanabhan, in a CFR project directed by John Bellinger and Matthew Waxman. And Lee Feinstein and Tod Lindberg’s Means to an End, a short book on the US interest and aims toward the ICC that came out in 2009.