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'Just trust me, bro. The contract totally says you have to do what I say it says you have to do. Don't read what it actually says. Also don't refer to any other laws that may cover you and what you're doing. Also, you're guilty because someone accused you. Why do you hate justice, bro? You're so illegal.'
You can either claim the law that is applies, or you can claim that law that does not exist should apply. You do not get to claim both, particularly when doing so is its own avenue of criminal conduct and justifying aggressive action.
This is particularly true when laws have conflicting elements, so that compliance with one part of the law does, in fact, create gaps in applicability in other parts. To do so otherwise is to demand the selective suspension of both letter and principles of law.
A vibes-based approach to international law rather than a legalistic-approach is how you get (and justify) neocon foreign policies of powerful states applying the 'spirit' of international law against others in the name of international law.
Laws do not apply to those they do not apply to. That is not tautological- that is categorical due to the nature of the thing. This is why principles of jurisdiction, basis of authority, and other such limiting factors. A lack of sufficient coverage/definitions may be an argument for different laws of different scope, but it is not an argument that, actually, the person/place/think is against the laws.
The nature of international law in turn is that it derives from the consent of the sovereign nation. That consent may be pressured/purchased/lobbied/transactional, but absent of that consent a treaty does not apply.
The International Criminal Court is not 'an international court of justice.' It is a treaty-court of members of the treaty, applying to members of the treaty, bound by the scope of its treaty... which itself explicitly limits itself to its members and its members sovereign territory. You, in turn, are the one saying others are violating international law by not complying with it.
This is not an appeal to international law. This is against the very law (treaty) that establishes the ICC. This is antithetical to the principle that the very same international law is based on, which is the sovereignty of the state to freely enter into treaties or not.
You are assuming the conclusion to conflate unlike issues, and poorly. It is not hostility to international law to recognize a court that by international law does not apply to you. Nor has an international court made a verdict on warcrimes if it has not made a verdict. The accusations in the ICJ are an accusation, not a finding, and it is not hostility to principles of law to deny the accuracy or validity of accusations, particularly when there are many grounds to.
Alternatively, they are being consistent with their principles, you just disagree with those principles, and want different principles to apply, inconsistently, by virtue of disagreeing with the limiting principles that are the bedrock of international law.
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