The International Criminal Court (ICC) seeks to end impunity for the atrocity crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and, eventually, crimes of aggression. My contribution to this discussion takes a consequentialist view to outline ethical hazards confronting the court. Since the ICC has only recently begun to operate, with its first suspect, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo of the Democratic Republic of Congo, arriving in The Hague in 2006 and his trial completed only in the fall of 2011 (and awaiting a verdict in 2012), it is too early to reach a general appraisal of the court's effects.

Since the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutes crimes of mass violence that are inherently political in nature, its actions will inevitably have political consequences about which the prosecutor and judges should be as well informed as possible. As some of the other contributors to this roundtable note, the ICC's actions and inactions may even have life-and-death consequences in the real world. It is ethically irresponsible for the ICC's officers to ignore those concerns. At the same time, the court's moral and legal authority derives entirely from its claim that it applies universal rules wherever it has jurisdiction. In order for the International Criminal Court to build legitimacy over time, it must both act and be seen to act in a neutral way that transcends political pressures. Rule-of-law courts do not derive their authority from their ability to command the use of force. Nor do they have the legitimacy of elected political officials who act as the representatives of a political community. The legitimacy of courts is a function of their claim to uphold universal rules of law that the community has chosen to adopt, regardless of whether doing so is popular or even prudent in a particular case with particular constituencies. Consequently, court officers in their formal actions—including prosecutorial requests for investigations, issuing arrest warrants, and filing charges, as well as in the judges' decisions on those questions—should always ground the rationale for their decisions in the pretense that they act only to uphold the law and without regard for political considerations.

The United Nations ad hoc tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda had primacy over national judicial agents for crimes committed in these countries during the most notorious civil wars and genocide of the 1990s. The UN Charter granted the Security Council the right to establish a tribunal for Yugoslavia in the context of ongoing civil war and against the will of recalcitrant national agents. The Council used that same right to punish individuals responsible for a genocide that it failed earlier to prevent in Rwanda. In both cases the Council delegated a portion of its coercive title to independent tribunal agents, thereby overriding the default locus of punishment in the world order: sovereign states.

The international regulation of whaling has been a tremendous success. It has reduced whale hunting dramatically from its peak in the 1960s and brought almost all species of whales out of danger of extinction. Today, whaling conservation stands as a—or perhaps the—paradigm of a successful international regime. Yet the international organization responsible for this success is itself in such crisis that it may not survive.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an unprecedented set of global commitments to reduce various forms of human deprivation and promote human development, are set to expire in 2015. Despite their promise, the MDGs are flawed in a variety of ways. The development community is already discussing what improved development framework should replace the MDGs. I argue that global justice advocates should focus first on the procedure for developing the post-2015 development framework. Specifically, they should create spaces for citizens, especially the most marginalized and oppressed, to actively deliberate about the form and content of a future global development framework, and ensure that this deliberation receives political uptake in formal intergovernmental processes for deciding the post-2015 framework.

In her recent article in this journal, Joy Gordon provides an astute history and critique of the evolution and application of smart sanctions within the United Nations system since the mid-1990s. Her analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the discrete types of smart sanctions is part of a growing discussion among both academics and practitioners about the future and the utility of these measures. As always, her continued skepticism about the effectiveness and ethical dimensions of economic sanctions deserves serious consideration and evaluation. In particular, Gordon raises three central concerns: (1) smart sanctions are no more successful than traditional trade sanctions; (2) each type of targeted mechanism has serious flaws; and (3) targeted sanctions did not end the humanitarian damage or the related ethical dilemmas that are embedded into sanctions design and implementation.