Over at Opinio Juris, an interesting exchange on the question of defining the crime of aggression as part of the International Criminal Court statute. Professor Michael Glennon discusses his Yale Journal of International Law article, The Blank-Prose Crime of Aggression, and Carrie McDougall, Larry Johnson, and Anthony Arend respond. I broadly agree with Professor Glennon, for reasons I’ve outlined in this post at OJ. I’m less interested in the analysis of the textual language than in the larger legal-diplomatic issues surrounding the question of how and whether the US should get closer formally to the ICC, given that this issue is the central question of the ICC’s ten year review conference. My answer is no. But as a descriptive rather than normative matter, I think I detect in the move to embrace aggression as a justiciable crime at the ICC, an emerging pattern of seeking ways to “contract around” the Security Council.