This is a

this CBS, I in the world. I'm John Bachelor. I welcome Professor Richard Epstein,

a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution teaches law at NYU in the University of Chicago

writing most recently about the Higgs International Court of Justice shortened as ICJ and a decision passed down from the ICJ about Israel's conduct of its self-defense

in the Gaza conflict.

The ICJ ordered Israel to, quote, immediately halt its military offensive

and any other action in the Rafa governate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring

about its physical destruction or in whole or in part."

End quote.

Richard, a very good evening to you.

What is the International Criminal Court of Justice at the Hague?

What is its writ, its mandate?

What are its powers?

Good evening to you.

Well, this is the highest tribunal organized by the United Nations.

It consists of 15 judges shoulders in mysterious ways and it has only jurisdiction over those nations that purport to consent to allowing it to

exercise its power. Israel and the United States, amongst others, have refused to

give that kind of consent and then you have this slightly surreal situation where the 15 of

kind of a kind of a real situation where the 15 judges in a particular case, one of them in an Israeli name

Iran Baroque who was in fact the great radical judge of the 1990 who did so much to transform for the worst in my view

is rarely jurisprudence. And what they do is they meet and they hear arguments from both sides and there was a large

contention from South Africa pressing the case.

...