The most uncomfortable truth about international law is not that it is useless. It is that it often works best against the weak, slowly against the middle powers, and uncertainly against the powerful.
The world has built courts, treaties, conventions and tribunals in the name of justice. It has created the International Court of Justice to settle disputes between states. It has created the International Criminal Court to prosecute individuals accused of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression. It has written solemn legal language around sovereignty, human dignity and the prohibition of force. Yet when a major power, a close ally of a major power, or a strategically valuable state refuses to comply, the machinery of justice begins to reveal its limits.
This is the central contradiction of global justice today: international courts can declare the law, but they cannot always compel obedience.
The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations under Article 92 of the UN Charter, and Article 94 says every UN member undertakes to comply with ICJ decisions in cases to which it is a party. But the same Article 94 also shows the weakness of the system: if a party fails to comply, the matter may go to the UN Security Council, where power politics and vetoes can block enforcement.
That single design flaw explains much of the crisis. The law may speak in The Hague, but enforcement still travels through New York — and in New York, the permanent members of the Security Council hold the keys.
The Promise of International Justice
International courts were born from a civilisational ambition: to prevent raw power from becoming the final judge of human affairs. After two world wars, colonial violence, mass atrocities and territorial aggression, the world attempted to create a legal order where states could not simply say, “We are strong, therefore we are right.”
The ICJ was designed to resolve disputes between states. Its work includes border disputes, treaty interpretation, genocide convention cases, questions of occupation, consular rights and the legality of state conduct. The ICC, by contrast, is aimed at individual criminal responsibility. It asks whether leaders, military commanders and other individuals can be held personally responsible for the gravest crimes.
In theory, this is revolutionary. It means a president, prime minister, general or militia commander cannot hide entirely behind the state. It means war is not a legal vacuum. It means sovereignty is no longer absolute immunity.
But in practice, courts depend on cooperation. They do not command armies. They do not control police forces. They do not run border posts. They rely on states to arrest suspects, provide evidence, enforce orders and accept judgments.
The ICC currently has 125 States Parties to the Rome Statute. That is significant, but it is still not universal. Several major powers and strategically important states remain outside the Rome Statute system, including the United States, Russia, China, India and Israel.
That membership gap is not a technical detail. It is the political heart of the problem.
When Law Meets Power
The weakness of international courts is clearest in cases involving great powers or their allies.
In 1986, the ICJ delivered its landmark judgment in the Nicaragua v. United States case. The Court found that the United States had violated international law through its support for the Contras and other actions against Nicaragua. But enforcement ran into the political reality of American power. The United States did not accept the ruling in practical terms, and a Security Council draft calling for compliance was vetoed by the US.
That case became a permanent lesson for smaller states: a legal victory does not automatically produce political compliance.
The same problem continues in today’s conflicts. In March 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the ICJ ordered Russia to suspend military operations in the case brought by Ukraine under the Genocide Convention. Russia did not comply.
The ICC later issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another Russian official in March 2023 over alleged war crimes related to the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children.
Legally, the warrant was historic. Politically, it created a test: would states arrest Putin if he travelled? Some ICC members would face treaty obligations. Others would calculate diplomatic costs. Russia, of course, rejected the Court’s authority.
This is where international justice becomes less like domestic criminal law and more like geopolitical pressure. The warrant matters. It restricts movement. It shapes diplomatic legitimacy. It signals that impunity is not cost-free. But it does not function like a normal arrest warrant inside a sovereign state.
Gaza, Israel and the Return of Selectivity
The Israel-Gaza war brought the same tension into sharper focus.
South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel before the ICJ. In January 2024, the Court ordered provisional measures, including steps to prevent acts under the Genocide Convention and enable humanitarian assistance. Later, the Court issued additional orders as the humanitarian situation worsened.
Separately, in November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, after rejecting Israel’s jurisdictional challenges.
This placed Western governments in a difficult position. Many of the same states that strongly backed accountability for Russia became more cautious when the legal process touched Israel, a close Western ally. The result was a credibility crisis. For much of the Global South, the issue was not merely Gaza. It was the perception that international justice becomes urgent when adversaries violate law, but complicated when allies are accused.
The United States went further. In February 2025, the White House issued an executive order imposing sanctions on the ICC, arguing that the Court’s actions against Israel and the United States threatened American sovereignty and national security.
By 2025, the US had expanded sanctions against ICC officials, and human rights bodies warned that such measures undermined the independence of the Court.
This is the exact point where the global legal order begins to look fragile. If courts can be sanctioned for investigating powerful states or their allies, then the independence of justice itself becomes vulnerable.
The Court Can Judge, But It Cannot Govern
The fundamental problem is not that international courts are powerless. They have real power — but it is a specific kind of power.
They can establish legal responsibility. They can shape diplomatic narratives. They can delegitimise aggression. They can preserve evidence. They can create historical records. They can make denial harder. They can give victims a formal language of justice. They can limit the travel and legitimacy of accused leaders. They can influence sanctions, arms transfers, trade decisions and domestic litigation.
But they cannot govern the world.
The ICJ cannot send a police force to enforce a ruling. The ICC cannot arrest a sitting head of state without state cooperation. The UN Security Council cannot act decisively when a permanent member or its close ally blocks enforcement. This creates a structural gap between legal authority and political capacity.
Domestic courts sit inside a state. International courts sit above states, but depend on them.
That is why global justice often advances through indirect pressure rather than direct enforcement. A court ruling may not immediately stop a war, but it can change the diplomatic cost of continuing it. An arrest warrant may not instantly put a leader in prison, but it can shrink the leader’s international space. A provisional order may not halt atrocities overnight, but it can create a legal benchmark against which future conduct is judged.
International courts therefore operate less like a hammer and more like a slow, cumulative weight.
Why Great Powers Resist International Courts
Great powers resist international courts for several reasons.
First, they fear external limits on strategic freedom. Military powers do not want judges reviewing their wars, interventions, occupations or counterterrorism campaigns.
Second, they fear precedent. If one ally can be investigated today, another can be investigated tomorrow. If one military operation is legally scrutinised, others may follow.
Third, they fear domestic political backlash. No government wants to be seen as surrendering national sovereignty to foreign judges, especially in emotionally charged matters involving war, national security or terrorism.
Fourth, great powers prefer forums where they have vetoes or influence. The Security Council gives permanent members formal power. Courts give them arguments, but not guaranteed control.
This is why the Security Council and international courts often pull in different directions. Courts speak the language of law. Councils speak the language of power.
The irony is that great powers often support international law when it constrains rivals. They invoke sovereignty when it protects them, humanitarian principles when rivals violate them, and procedural complexity when allies are accused. This selective use does not destroy international law, but it weakens its moral authority.
India’s Position: Between Sovereignty and Justice
India’s position on international courts is shaped by a deep sensitivity to sovereignty, colonial history, strategic autonomy and national security.
India supports international law in principle. It has used legal forums, respects many treaty obligations and often argues for a rules-based international order. But India has not joined the ICC. Its concerns have included sovereignty, the role of the UN Security Council in referrals, the scope of prosecutorial powers, and the possibility that international criminal law could be used selectively against states facing internal security challenges.
This is not an isolated Indian position. Many Global South states support accountability but worry about selective enforcement. Their concern is simple: will international law restrain everyone, or will it become another instrument through which powerful states discipline weaker ones?
For India, the issue is especially complex. As a rising power, India benefits from a stable legal order. It wants freedom of navigation, respect for sovereignty, protection of diaspora interests, treaty stability and rules against aggression. At the same time, India is wary of legal mechanisms that may be shaped by Western priorities or used to internationalise sensitive domestic and regional issues.
This creates a delicate balance. India cannot dismiss international courts as irrelevant. A world without legal restraints would favour military and economic giants even more. But India also cannot ignore the political asymmetry built into global justice.
The smarter Indian position is not anti-court. It is reformist. India’s interest lies in stronger, fairer, less selective international institutions — institutions where accountability does not depend on who the accused is, whose ally is involved, or which capital controls the enforcement channel.
The Global South’s Frustration
For the Global South, the crisis of international courts is part of a larger crisis of post-war institutions.
The same countries that dominate the Security Council often dominate financial institutions, sanctions regimes, arms flows and diplomatic narratives. When legal institutions appear selective, they reinforce the older complaint that the global order is not truly rules-based but power-managed.
This is why cases involving Palestine, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan and Myanmar are watched not only legally but politically. States and citizens ask: whose suffering becomes a global emergency, and whose suffering becomes a footnote?
International courts cannot answer that question alone. But they become the stage on which the question is performed.
When the ICC acts against African leaders, critics call it biased. When it acts against Russian or Israeli leaders, great powers call it politicised. When it hesitates, victims call it weak. When it moves, governments call it intrusive.
This is the burden of global justice: every action is accused of politics, but inaction is also political.
The Counter-View: Courts Still Matter
It would be wrong to conclude that international courts are useless. That argument is emotionally attractive but analytically weak.
If courts did not matter, powerful states would not spend so much energy attacking, avoiding or delegitimising them. The anger directed at international courts is itself evidence that their judgments carry political force.
The ICC warrant against Putin changed the diplomatic environment around Russia. The ICJ orders in the Israel case placed legal scrutiny on a conflict that many states preferred to frame only through security language. The ICC warrants against Israeli leaders forced Western states to confront the gap between their Ukraine rhetoric and their Gaza policy. The Nicaragua case remains a reference point decades later because it exposed the limits of American compliance with international law.
Courts may fail to enforce immediate obedience, but they preserve memory. They create records that outlive propaganda. They generate legal language that civil society, smaller states, journalists, lawyers and future governments can use. They make it harder for power to claim innocence without challenge.
International law does not always defeat power. But it often prevents power from appearing morally effortless.
What Happens Next
The future of international courts will likely move in three directions.
First, legal activism will increase. More states, especially from the Global South, will use international courts to challenge war, occupation, sanctions, climate harm, racial discrimination and humanitarian crises. The courtroom will become an arena of diplomacy.
Second, backlash will intensify. Powerful states and their allies will resist jurisdiction, attack prosecutors, threaten sanctions and argue that courts are politicised. The more courts touch real power, the more political pressure they will face.
Third, reform demands will grow. The credibility of global justice cannot survive permanently if enforcement depends on the same Security Council whose permanent members are often parties to the world’s biggest conflicts. Reform of international justice will eventually have to confront the veto problem, state cooperation gaps, funding pressure and unequal access to legal remedies.
The recent decision by Hungary’s parliament in May 2026 to remain a member of the ICC, reversing a prior withdrawal move linked to the Netanyahu warrant controversy, shows that the struggle is not one-sided. Even under pressure, some states still see value in defending the Court.
That matters because international courts survive not by force, but by legitimacy. Every state that cooperates strengthens them. Every state that ignores them weakens them. Every selective response makes them look political. Every principled response makes them harder to dismiss.
Conclusion: Justice Cannot Depend on Permission From Power
International courts are not world governments. They cannot end wars by order. They cannot arrest leaders without cooperation. They cannot overcome the Security Council veto by moral force alone.
But they remain one of the few institutions where power can still be questioned in the language of law.
Their struggle is not proof that international justice has failed. It is proof that international justice has reached the hardest battlefield: the conduct of powerful states.
The real test of global justice is not whether weak states obey court orders. The real test is whether strong states accept limits when the law becomes inconvenient.
Until that happens, international courts will continue to perform a difficult role. They will judge where they cannot fully enforce. They will document where they cannot immediately punish. They will remind the world that legality and power are not the same thing.
