Law and Ethics presents advances and challenges in international law and frames ethical debates in international affairs. Philosophers, ethicists, law practitioners, advocates and scholars from around the world tackle some of the most challenging international dilemmas of our day. Law and Ethics gives Journal readers a look at issues ranging from the recruitment of young soldiers in violent conflicts to the extradition of heads of state accused of war crimes and the ethical questions surrounding economic development in the world's poorest areas.

The Darfur Dilemma:
U.S. Policy Toward the ICC

By John Stompor

During the first U.S. presidential debate in September 2004, President George Bush, who was then running for re-election, pointedly reminded the audience that he had withdrawn U.S. support for the International Criminal Court (ICC), criticizing it as “a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors can pull our troops or diplomats up for trial.”1 President Bush, in his first term, had actively opposed the ICC, authorizing the U.S. State Department not only to declare that the United States no longer considers itself bound by its signature to the treaty establishing the Court, but also to seek agreements with individual states and resolutions of the UN Security Council providing immunity from the ICC for U.S. nationals, employees, and contractors. more...

Strengthening Protection of IDPs:
The UN’s Role

By Roberta Cohen

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan drew attention to “the growing problem of internally displaced persons” (IDPs) in his 2005 report on UN reform, In Larger Freedom. Unlike refugees, IDPs do not cross international borders and thus have no wellestablished system of international assistance or protection. IDPs, Annan wrote, “often fall into the cracks between different humanitarian bodies.” Despite this acknowledgement of the predicament of IDPs, nowhere in the 2005 UN World Summit document, adopted by heads of government in September, does it spell out how to improve the UN’s ability to address the plight of the twenty to twenty-five million people uprooted within their own countries by violence, ethnic strife, and civil war. more...