Integrity Score 365
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But the expected indictment in the federal case will invariably be controversial, because it will be coming from the Biden administration’s Justice Department after Trump has already announced his presidential candidacy for 2024. Following the New York indictment, Smith’s efforts will face the additional challenge of looking like a prosecutorial pile-on.
One might think that concerns about the practical consequences of prosecuting Putin and Trump are irrelevant. Both men have committed very bad acts, after all, and the rule of law demands that they be punished. Fiat justitia, ruat caelum – let justice be done, though the heavens fall.
But this is an unrealistic view of criminal law operation in high-stakes domestic and international politics. If the ICC arrest warrant leads to more death and suffering than would otherwise occur, the court and the broader project of international criminal law will be discredited. Likewise, if the New York indictment empowers Trump – and especially if it is seen as setting off a chain of events that leads to his re-election, or to destabilizing tit-for-tat retaliations down the road – it will come to be seen by many Americans as a tragic error.
We cannot know now if these things will happen, or will be seen in this way. But if so, justice obviously will not have been done.
Jack Goldsmith is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2023.
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